Google Pits Dataflow Against Spark

It is almost without question that search engine giant Google has the most sophisticated and scalable data analytics platform on the planet. The company has been on the leading edge of analytics and the infrastructure that supports it for a decade and a half and through its various services it has an enormous amount of data on which to chew and draw inferences to drive its businesses.

In the wake of the launch of Amazon Web Services a decade ago, Google came to the conclusion that what end users really needed was services to store and process data, not access

Google Pits Dataflow Against Spark was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

10 best-paying companies in tech

Best-paying companies in techImage by ThinkstockThe modern business world runs on technology, which means companies need people to manage it. Getting a job in STEM is a great way to not only ensure job security, but also earn a six figure salary. Glassdoor -- a website that offers reviews, salaries and benefits information provided by employees on companies from all industries -- collects salary data on the biggest tech companies in the U.S. to determine the 10 highest paying tech companies. Using their self-reported data, Glassdoor calculated the average total compensation and median base salary for companies across every industry. These are the top 10 technology companies that report the highest average salaries. Juniper NetworksImage by ThinkstockTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to identify, engage and nurture high-potential talent

In a tight talent market, succession planning should be a core part of any business's workforce management and development plan. Building a pipeline of talent ready to take on progressively greater responsibility and leadership in an organization is key to driving success, especially in the constantly evolving IT market.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

How to counter outsourcers’ cost of living adjustments

For years, most large outsourcing contracts have included standard provisions for annual pricing adjustments based on consumer price indices and other economic indicators. These cost of living adjustments are intended to normalize services fees with economic conditions over the life of long-term deals. The impact on pricing can be significant—in the millions of dollars for a large deal. A $50 million annual services contract with a 2.75 percent cost of living adjustment could mean a $1.375 million increase in annual fees.  In theory, cost of living adjustments help service providers reduce attrition by ensuring that employee salaries keep up with market trends. Staff retention benefits providers and allows clients to avoid the disruption of employee turnover.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Windows 10 on pace to reach 20% share by June

Windows 10 is on pace to power 20% of all Windows desktop systems by the end of June, or around the time Microsoft issues its next major upgrade, according to data published this week.Data from U.S.-based analytics vendor Net Applications pegged Windows 10's user share -- a proxy for the percentage of personal computers worldwide that ran the OS -- at 15.3% in April, a 1.2-percentage point increase from the month prior. Net Applications tallied unique visitors to clients' websites to come up with its measurements.The new operating system's growth last month was smaller than in January and March of this year, but larger than February's.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Quantum computers pose a huge threat to security, and the NIST wants your help

It's no secret that quantum computers could render many of today's encryption methods useless, and now the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology wants the public to help it head off that threat.The federal agency recently published a report focusing on cryptography in a quantum world that outlines a long-term approach for avoiding the problem before it happens."There has been a lot of research into quantum computers in recent years, and everyone from major computer companies to the government want their cryptographic algorithms to be what we call 'quantum resistant,'" said NIST mathematician Dustin Moody. "So if and when someone does build a large-scale quantum computer, we want to have algorithms in place that it can't crack."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Quantum computers pose a huge threat to security, and the NIST wants your help

It's no secret that quantum computers could render many of today's encryption methods useless, and now the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology wants the public to help it head off that threat.The federal agency recently published a report focusing on cryptography in a quantum world that outlines a long-term approach for avoiding the problem before it happens."There has been a lot of research into quantum computers in recent years, and everyone from major computer companies to the government want their cryptographic algorithms to be what we call 'quantum resistant,'" said NIST mathematician Dustin Moody. "So if and when someone does build a large-scale quantum computer, we want to have algorithms in place that it can't crack."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Security ‘net: Privacy and Cybercrime Edition

DDoS blackmail is an increasingly common form of cybercrime, it appears. The general pattern is something like this: the administrator of a large corporate site receives an email, threatening a large scale DDoS attack unless the company deposits some amount of bitcoin in an untraceable account. Sometimes, if the company doesn’t comply, the blackmail is followed up with a small “sample attack,” and a second contact or email asking for more bitcoin than the first time.

The best reaction to these types of things is either to work with your service provider to hunker down and block the attack, or to simply ignore the threat. For instance, there has been a spate of threats from someone called Armada Collective over the last several weeks that appear to be completely empty; while threats have been reported, no action appears to have been taken.

We heard from more than 100 existing and prospective CloudFlare customers who had received the Armada Collective’s emailed threats. We’ve also compared notes with other DDoS mitigation vendors with customers that had received similar threats. -via Cloudflare

The bottom line is this: you should never pay against these threats. It’s always better to contact your provider and work Continue reading

Application-layer DDoS attacks will increase, Kaspersky Labs predicts

Monday is still the busiest day of the week for DDoS attacks, with Thursday replacing Tuesday as the second most-active day.According to Kaspersky Lab’s DDoS intelligence report covering the first quarter of 2016, 74 countries were targeted by DDoS attacks, with China, South Korea and the the United States as the top three most-targeted countries. There was slight drop in the percentage of attacks targeting resources in the U.S.SYN, TCP and HTTP were the top three most-popular DDoS attack methods in Q1.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Application-layer DDoS attacks will increase, Kaspersky Labs predicts

Monday is still the busiest day of the week for DDoS attacks, with Thursday replacing Tuesday as the second most-active day.According to Kaspersky Lab’s DDoS intelligence report covering the first quarter of 2016, 74 countries were targeted by DDoS attacks, with China, South Korea and the the United States as the top three most-targeted countries. There was slight drop in the percentage of attacks targeting resources in the U.S.SYN, TCP and HTTP were the top three most-popular DDoS attack methods in Q1.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Kaspersky predicts application-layer DDoS attacks will increase

Monday is still the busiest day of the week for DDoS attacks with Thursday replacing Tuesday as the second most active day.According to Kaspersky Lab’s DDoS intelligence report covering the first quarter of 2016, 74 countries were targeted by DDoS attacks, with China, South Korea and the USA as the top three most-targeted countries. There was slight drop in the percentage of attacks targeting resources in the USA.SYN, TCP and HTTP were the top three most popular DDoS attack methods in Q1. Kaspersky Lab's Q1 2016 DDoS Intelligence Report Most botnet attacks are launched from Windows, 55.5% in Q1 2016, compared to 44.5% being Linux-based attacks. South Korea still has the most C&C servers, followed by China, “other,” USA, Russia, a tie by Great Britain and the Netherlands, followed by France.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trend Micro: 6 most popular homebrewed terrorist tools

Terrorists are developing and distributing encryption tools that protect privacy of their communications, as well as other homegrown apps that include a news-feed compiler and DDoS attack software, according to a Trend Micro report.The tools have been made to give less tech-savvy members of terror groups the ability to use known technologies without having to trust or invest in commercial products that can perform the same functions, the report says.Some of the tools are still being updated, indicating an active development community among the terrorists.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trend Micro: 6 most popular homebrewed terrorist tools

Terrorists are developing and distributing encryption tools that protect privacy of their communications, as well as other homegrown apps that include a news-feed compiler and DDoS attack software, according to a Trend Micro report.The tools have been made to give less tech-savvy members of terror groups the ability to use known technologies without having to trust or invest in commercial products that can perform the same functions, the report says.Some of the tools are still being updated, indicating an active development community among the terrorists.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: ExtraHop broadens its monitoring further across hybrid environments

ExtraHop is a vendor that offers real-time stream analytics for data in motion. That's a fancy-schmancy way of saying ExtraHop analyzes communication across the network to give visibility into application performance, availability and security. ExtraHop is an agent-less, appliance-based offering that promises cross-tier visibility.Given this message of visibility across geographically distributed operations, and across multiple infrastructure providers, it is perhaps unsurprising to see ExtraHop today announce the availability of extended public cloud monitoring functionality to now include Microsoft Azure (alongside the existing Amazon Web Services). On top of the Azure extension, ExtraHop is extending its offering to support branch offices to benefit geographically dispersed organizations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMware NSX: From Turning Point to Tipping Point

I’m very excited that I get the opportunity to report on another exceptional quarter for VMware NSX. As a company, we’re demonstrating that NSX will be an important growth driver for the foreseeable future. We added more than 200 new NSX customers in the quarter, and have more than 120 customers that have spent more than $1M on NSX. Organizations such as Shutterfly, TriZetto, Riverside County, and Royal Bank of Scotland are all making commitments to NSX as a foundational part of their IT future. Production deployments also continued to accelerate. We have more than 340, and in Q1 added the equivalent of one new NSX production deployment each day.

NSX is, indisputably, the leading software network overlay. NSX is proving equally valuable across all hardware underlays. Most notably, we’re starting to see customer proof points of something we’ve said all along – VMware NSX and Cisco ACI can be successfully deployed in the same environment to address different pain points. Just look at customers such as Sugar Creek and Hutto ISD; even the channel recognizes this as reported by CRN.

Executing On the NSX Plan, Reaching the Turning Point

The plan for growing NSX in the market was very Continue reading