Fight for privacy of students, cellphone users moves to US states

The fight for privacy is moving to U.S. states with 16 states and the District of Columbia introducing legislation on Wednesday that address issues such as requiring permission before student data is shared for non-educational purposes and the requirement of warrants before using cell site simulators to track phone users.“A bipartisan consensus on privacy rights is emerging, and now the states are taking collective action where Congress has been largely asleep at the switch,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which coordinated the initiative, in a statement. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ukrainian power companies are getting hit with more cyberattacks

A number of Ukrainian power companies are seeing fresh cyberattacks following ones in December that briefly knocked out power for tens of thousands of customers. Security vendor Eset said on Wednesday that the attacks use a different kind of malware, prompting questions about whether the same group or groups are involved. "The malware is based on a freely available open-source backdoor – something no one would expect from an alleged state-sponsored malware operator," wrote Robert Lipovsky, a senior malware researcher with Eset. The new finding deepens the mystery over who is targeting the Ukrainian companies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Looking Ahead: My 2016 Projects

Almost every year since 2012, I’ve been publishing a list of projects/goals for the upcoming year (here’s the original list for 2012, then 2013, I skipped 2014, and here’s the list for 2015). In this post, I’m going to share with you the list of projects/goals for 2016.

Here’s the list for 2016. For some of the items below, I’m also going to include a stretch goal, something I’ll aim toward but won’t count against myself if I don’t actually attain it.

  1. Complete a new book (again). In addition to actually completing the new network automation book I’m writing with Jason Edelman and Matt Oswalt (it’s available now as an Early Access edition), I have another book project lined up that I intend to finish and get published in 2016.

  2. Make more open source contributions. I failed this one miserably last year (see last year’s report card), but I am intent on making this one happen. Over time, I expect that this will just be part of who I am, but until then I’m going to explicitly call it out. Since I’m not a programmer (not yet, may never be), these contributions will have Continue reading

FireEye to grow intelligence capabilities with iSight Partners deal

FireEye has acquired Texas-based iSight Partners for $200 million, a deal that executives say will give FireEye stronger intelligence on cybercriminal and hacking groups before they strike.The transaction, announced Wednesday, closed on Jan. 14.FireEye started with an end-point protection product aimed at filtering out malware before it entered a company's network. But the company has sought to expand its range of services through acquisitions as cybersecurity has become an ever-increasing concern -- and a more lucrative business.In early 2014, it bought Mandiant, a computer security company that specializes in investigating cyberattacks. The victims of some of the largest data breaches in memory, including Target, have retained Mandiant's services.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Preparing IT for the ‘gig economy’

In the next 10 years, companies will regularly tap into a vast pool of independent contractors to get work done on a crowdsourced, pay-as-you-go basis, according to research supported by the Society for Information Management’s Advanced Practices Council.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Open Networking: The Eject Button

Those of us that weren’t born in the iPod era used to have physical music and movie media like cassette tapes, vinyl, CDs, minidisc, VHS and almost Beta Max. The idea was that you could take this media and play it on any compatible player and in some cases record too. Ok, I know the concept is almost the same with digital media, but there is something nostalgic about physical things.

Focussing on the mighty cassette tape, the medium that young teenagers used to woo their targets with heart felt mix tapes, it was possible to buy cassettes of different record time lengths and different materials for quality. Cassette decks were integrated in to boom boxes, Sony Walkmans, all in one HiFi units and of course, the more quality HiFi separate devices along with supposed studio quality devices. To give it some more background, these devices would have support electronics like headphone amplifiers, graphic equalisers, high speed dubbing (for fast transfer between decks), microphone amplifier circuits and even motorised loading and eject mechanisms. See the vague similarity between this and networking? No, I thought not. The cassette much like interchangeable networking components is removable. It’s transportable and although the tape Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Data center outages increasingly caused by DDoS

Think housing your servers in a data center rather than squeezing them under your desk is a bulletproof solution?Well, they might be safer in a data center, but believe it or not, some of the same pitfalls that can create trouble in the office can affect those secure data centers too. Namely UPS failure, human error, and cybercrime.'Unplanned' UPS system failure is still the principal cause of "unplanned data center outages," according to a new report.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Data center outages increasingly caused by DDoS

Think housing your servers in a data center rather than squeezing them under your desk is a bulletproof solution?Well, they might be safer in a data center, but believe it or not, some of the same pitfalls that can create trouble in the office can affect those secure data centers too. Namely UPS failure, human error, and cybercrime.'Unplanned' UPS system failure is still the principal cause of "unplanned data center outages," according to a new report.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Subdermal wearables could unlock real possibilities for enterprise IoT

It looks like a slick Jedi move, but it's actually the Internet of Things: When Hannes Sjöblad wants to pay for coffee, he waves his hand in front of the pay station. When he wants to open a door, he waves his hand in front of the digital lock. When he wants to start his car, he waves his hand in front of the ignition. No, he's not Obi-Wan Kenobi saving two rebel droids; Sjöblad is a famous Swedish bodyhacker who has implanted electronics, including a passive Near-Field Communications (NFC) transmitter, into his own hand. So, instead of using his smartphone or smartwatch to activate a payment terminal, a wave of the hand gets the job done.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Privacy-conscious users rejoice: You can now use Facebook’s Android app over Tor

Facebook has added the option to route traffic from its Android mobile app over the Tor anonymity network. This will come as good news for privacy-conscious users or those living in countries where the service is censored.Users can enable the new feature, which is still experimental, from the Facebook app's settings. However, they first need to install a separate application from Google Play called Orbot that functions as a proxy for routing traffic through Tor.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Feds seek balance between privacy and data collection

Authorities at the Federal Trade Commission are working overtime to keep up with the ever-changing online privacy landscape, a fast-moving environment that is highly technical but also keys into the core consumer-protection functions of the agency.FTC officials recently hosted a day-long privacy conference that saw a parade of academics present their latest research on the ways that online companies are collecting and using their customers' personal information.FTC Chair Edith Ramirez has made no secret of her worry that some companies may be stepping over the line in their information-gathering practices, deliberately obscuring the details of what data they collect, how long they hold onto it and what they do with it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Dell serves up its own disaggregated OS

Dell, one of the industry’s first disaggregators, this week began an initiative to decouple its software.The company unveiled an operating system that separates the applications and services from the base OS platform. Called OS10, Dell plans to make it its strategic operating systems offering, extending from Dell switches to also power its servers and storage products.+MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Enterprise disaggregation is inevitable+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Building An Infinitely Scaleable Online Recording Campaign For David Guetta

This is a guest repost of an interview posted by Ryan S. Brown that originally appeared on serverlesscode.com. It continues our exploration of building systems on top of Lambda.

Paging David Guetta fans: this week we have an interview with the team that built the site behind his latest ad campaign. On the site, fans can record themselves singing along to his single, “This One’s For You” and build an album cover to go with it.

Under the hood, the site is built on Lambda, API Gateway, and CloudFront. Social campaigns tend to be pretty spiky – when there’s a lot of press a stampede of users can bring infrastructure to a crawl if you’re not ready for it. The team at parall.ax chose Lambda because there are no long-lived servers, and they could offload all the work of scaling their app up and down with demand to Amazon.

James Hall from parall.ax is going to tell us how they built an internationalized app that can handle any level of demand from nothing in just six weeks.

The Interview

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