US state officials worry about their ability to respond to cyberattacks

Many states aren't confident of their ability to respond to cyberattacks on physical infrastructure such as water and electric systems, U.S. emergency response officials say.The U.S. government could do several things to help states improve their response to cyberattacks, including increased funding for technology training programs, cybersecurity experts told a House of Representatives committee Tuesday.States have difficulty hiring top cybersecurity employees, said Steven Spano, president and COO of the Center for Internet Security. Cybersecurity workers are a "high-demand, low-density asset," the former Air Force general told two subcommittees of the House Homeland Security Committee.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

US state officials worry about their ability to respond to cyberattacks

Many states aren't confident of their ability to respond to cyberattacks on physical infrastructure such as water and electric systems, U.S. emergency response officials say.The U.S. government could do several things to help states improve their response to cyberattacks, including increased funding for technology training programs, cybersecurity experts told a House of Representatives committee Tuesday.States have difficulty hiring top cybersecurity employees, said Steven Spano, president and COO of the Center for Internet Security. Cybersecurity workers are a "high-demand, low-density asset," the former Air Force general told two subcommittees of the House Homeland Security Committee.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Twilio rolls out mobile communications platform and add-on marketplace

I've known Jeff Lawson, the founder and CEO of communications provider Twilio, for a number of years. I first sat down and chatted with Lawson (see video below) five years ago. At that time, our conversation was about how Lawson believed the new style of enterprise was enabling its people to do more, faster.At that stage, Lawson was a couple of years into his Twilio journey, and the company was a much smaller organization. Today, Twilio has over 500 employees, with headquarters in San Francisco and other offices in Bogotá, Colombia; Dublin, Ireland; Hong Kong; London; Mountain View, California; Munich; New York City; Singapore; and Tallinn, Estonia.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google Daydream is a contrarian platform bet on mobile virtual reality

Google is betting that its Daydream platform for mobile virtual reality—announced last week at Google I/O 2016—will be good enough, its performance will evolve faster and its price will drop faster than immersive VR headsets such as the top-tier Oculus and HTC Vive.Given a choice between a perfect immersive VR headset that costs at least $1,800, plus a PC upgrade, or good mobile VR like Google Daydream that stretches the smartphone upgrade budget by only a few hundred dollars, all but the most serious enthusiasts will choose Daydream.+ More on Network World: Google I/O 2016: Google’s biggest announcements +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DARPA moves “aircraft-like” spacecraft technology to next phase

DARPA this week detailed the next development phase of its reusable Mach 10 satellite taxi capable of carrying and deploying a 3,000- 5,000 lb. satellite into low earth orbit (LEO) at a target cost of less than $5M per launch. +More on Network World: NASA wants to get supersonic with new passenger jet+ The reusable Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) XS-1 will demonstrate the potential for low cost and “aircraft-like” high operations payload delivery to orbit. DARPA said Phase 2 and 3 development will likely see a single contract worth $140M (Phase II - $123M, Phase III - $17M). The research agency in 2014 awarded Boeing (working with Blue Origin) Masten Space Systems (working with XCOR Aerospace) and Northrop Grumman Corporation (working with Virgin Galactic) contracts to begin phase 1 XS-1 work.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DARPA moves “aircraft-like” spacecraft technology to next phase

DARPA this week detailed the next development phase of its reusable Mach 10 satellite taxi capable of carrying and deploying a 3,000- 5,000 lb. satellite into low earth orbit (LEO) at a target cost of less than $5M per launch. +More on Network World: NASA wants to get supersonic with new passenger jet+ The reusable Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) XS-1 will demonstrate the potential for low cost and “aircraft-like” high operations payload delivery to orbit. DARPA said Phase 2 and 3 development will likely see a single contract worth $140M (Phase II - $123M, Phase III - $17M). The research agency in 2014 awarded Boeing (working with Blue Origin) Masten Space Systems (working with XCOR Aerospace) and Northrop Grumman Corporation (working with Virgin Galactic) contracts to begin phase 1 XS-1 work.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How the Internet of Things improves air travel

Air travel has come a long way since the dark days of 2001. Security remains a concern, but the industry is paying increasing attention to innovation and customer service, and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are playing a big role in efforts to make aviation more efficient and improve the passenger experience. As the costs of Internet-connected sensors and networking equipment continue to plummet, airlines, airport operators, airplane manufacturers and other travel and aviation industry suppliers are finding new ways to deploy and use IoT technologies.IoT-related developments in the air travel market could be applicable in many other industries. For example, IT managers in retail may find inspiration from the ways IoT technology is being used at Miami International Airport. And aircraft and engine makers have found applications for connected systems that could be beneficial to companies throughout manufacturing and heavy industry.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Windows hardware demands are going up for first time in seven years

If you go out shopping for a new PC after the Windows 10 Anniversary Update rolls out this summer, you might notice something we haven’t seen in a long, long time. The basic hardware requirements for Windows 10 are going up—albeit just slightly. This is the first such hardware increase since 2009 when Windows 7 rolled out.Starting with the Anniversary Update, Microsoft’s recommended specifications to hardware vendors—as first noticed by WinBeta and Nokia Power User—will see the RAM requirement increase for 32-bit versions from 1GB to 2GB. It’s a minor change to be sure, but it is the first such change in nearly seven years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New DMA Locker ransomware is ramping up for widespread attacks

The TeslaCrypt creators called it quits recently, but unfortunately for users, there's a new ransomware program that's ready to take its place.Called DMA Locker, this threat first appeared in January, but its encryption implementation was so flawed that it was hard to take it seriously. Researchers had no problem developing a file recovery tool for the first two versions.However, its authors have recently fixed all issues and malware researchers believe that with the newly released version 4, DMA Locker has reached maturity and might be the next thing to hit users in widespread attacks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New DMA Locker ransomware is ramping up for widespread attacks

The TeslaCrypt creators called it quits recently, but unfortunately for users, there's a new ransomware program that's ready to take its place.Called DMA Locker, this threat first appeared in January, but its encryption implementation was so flawed that it was hard to take it seriously. Researchers had no problem developing a file recovery tool for the first two versions.However, its authors have recently fixed all issues and malware researchers believe that with the newly released version 4, DMA Locker has reached maturity and might be the next thing to hit users in widespread attacks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Attacking overconsumption of cloud services

In the early 2000's when the IT world was in the throes of ERP, CRM, SFA and ecommerce, IT infrastructure was invariably designed to support the absolute worst-case scenario. I quickly learned there were two options when launching any self-serve solution: it either flat-lines or takes off like a rocket—there is no in-between. The capacity planning challenge drove the development of grid computing, then virtualization, and finally cloud computing. Although with cloud we now have a way to rapidly scale up to meet increasing demand, it seems we have forgotten scaling down to conserve resources is equally important. Instead of provisioning “just in case” our worst fears came true, I find repeated examples where cloud is provisioned “just because.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Can Enterprise Workloads Run on Bare-Metal Servers?

One of my readers left a comment on my “optimize your data center by virtualizing the servers” blog post saying (approximately):

Seems like LinkedIn did it without virtualization :) Can enterprises achieve this to some extent?

Assuming you want to replace physical servers with one or two CPU cores and 4GB of memory with modern servers having dozens of cores and hundreds of GB of memory the short answer is: not for a long time.

Read more ...

Samsung Experts Put Kubernetes Through The Paces

No one expects that setting up management tools for complex distributed computing frameworks to be an easy thing, but there is always room for improvement–and always a chance to take out unnecessary steps and improve the automated deployment of such tools.

The hassle of setting up such frameworks, such as Hadoop for data analytics, OpenStack for virtualized infrastructure, or Kubernetes or Mesos for software container management is an inhibitor to the adoption of those new technologies. Working with raw open source software and weaving it together into a successful management control plane is not something all enterprises have the skills …

Samsung Experts Put Kubernetes Through The Paces was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

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