Scalability Is A Matter Of Context

Scale is a relative term. While every technology needs to scale to some point to be useful to IT practitioners, not every technology needs to scale infinitely. Every technology has a context in which it is viable — where it proves to be the best choice. But in another context, the opposite technology might rise to the surface as more appropriate. Don't be religious about such a decision. Know your business need well, research the technology thoroughly, plan for the future, and choose wisely. Don't pick a tool that solves someone else's problem.

Facebook aims to launch unmanned drone by year-end

At 140 feet, it has the wingspan of a Boeing 737, but carries no passengers—and it’s much lighter too, weighing in at no more than 1,000 pounds. And within the next couple months, Facebook hopes to get its drone off the ground on an inaugural test flight.Named Aquila, the aircraft is the product of more than a year’s work at the social networking giant. Its function is not to drop retail items from the clouds like Amazon’s drones, but to provide Internet access to the hundreds of millions of people who don’t have it in under-served parts of the world. Facebook aims to partner with carriers and other companies to provide connectivity, potentially at a lower cost than typical infrastructure like cell phone towers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google rejects French request to expand right to be forgotten

Google won’t comply with an order from France’s privacy watchdog group to apply the right to be forgotten to all its search results around the world.In June, CNIL, France’s data protection authority, ordered Google to remove search results meeting “right to be forgotten” criteria from any regional version of Google’s search engine. However, granting CNIL’s request could have a “serious chilling effect on the web,” Google said Thursday in a blog post.The request stems from May 2014 decision issued by the European Court of Justice that allows Europeans to ask search engines in the region to scrub results that contain information about them that’s found to be inadequate, irrelevant or not in the public interest. This has been dubbed the right to be forgotten.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google rejects French request to expand right to be forgotten

Google won’t comply with an order from France’s privacy watchdog group to apply the right to be forgotten to all its search results around the world.In June, CNIL, France’s data protection authority, ordered Google to remove search results meeting “right to be forgotten” criteria from any regional version of Google’s search engine. However, granting CNIL’s request could have a “serious chilling effect on the web,” Google said Thursday in a blog post.The request stems from May 2014 decision issued by the European Court of Justice that allows Europeans to ask search engines in the region to scrub results that contain information about them that’s found to be inadequate, irrelevant or not in the public interest. This has been dubbed the right to be forgotten.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Critical BIND denial-of-service flaw could disrupt large portions of the Internet

Attackers could exploit a new vulnerability in BIND, the most popular Domain Name System (DNS) server software, to disrupt the Internet for many users.The vulnerability affects all versions of BIND 9, from BIND 9.1.0 to BIND 9.10.2-P2, and can be exploited to crash DNS servers that are powered by the software.The Domain Name System is the Internet’s phone book. It’s used to convert domain and host names into numerical Internet Protocol (IP) addresses that computers need to communicate with each other. The DNS is made up of a global network of servers and a very large number of them run BIND, a software package developed and maintained by a nonprofit corporation called the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DataTorrent tackles complexity of Hadoop data ingestion

While the buzz around big data analysis is at a peak, there is less discussion about how to get the necessary data into the systems in the first place, which can involve the cumbersome task of setting up and maintaining a number of data processing pipelines. To help solve this problem, Santa Clara, California start-up DataTorrent has released what it calls the first enterprise-grade ingestion application for Hadoop, DataTorrent dtIngest. The application is designed to streamline the process of collecting, aggregating, and moving data onto and off of a Hadoop cluster. The software is based on Project Apex, an open source software package available under the Apache 2.0 license.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Opponents focus on defeating CISA cyberthreat info sharing bill

Opponents of a U.S. Senate bill intended to encourage businesses to share information about cyberthreats may have stalled a vote on the legislation.Recent news reports had Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pushing for a vote on the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) before a four-week summer recess starting Aug. 10, but a spokesman for the Kentucky Republican said Thursday there were no immediate plans for a vote.CISA is “one of the bills we want to get done,” however, the spokesman said by email.CISA would give businesses immunity from customer lawsuits when they share information about cyberthreats with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, but opponents of the legislation say it would allow businesses to share personal information about customers. DHS could then pass that personal information on to the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies, critics say.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Endpoint security firm SentinelOne challenges traditional anti-virus software

Next-generation endpoint protection vendor SentinelOne has received the same certification that many traditional antivirus platforms seek, meaning it can be considered suitable for meeting certain requirements of industry and governmental regulations.The company’s new endpoint protection platform, called EPP, has won an Approved Corporate Endpoint Protection seal of approval from AV-Test, a firm that evaluates and certifies a range of security products. The seal of approval means the device meets AV-Test standards, and those standards carry weight in determining whether corporate defenses comply with regulations.+More on Network World: Next-generation endpoint protection not as easy as it sounds+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

WLAN Triage with the Fluke AirCheck

Disclosure - I was provided an evaluation unit by Fluke Networks to review. However, all opinions expressed in this post are solely my own and in no way constitute a paid arrangement.

The Fluke Networks AirCheck Wi-Fi Tester has been around for a while now. And I'm late to the game, despite having seen its initial release as part of Wireless Field Day 1. I was impressed with the brief hands-on time that I had with the unit back in 2012 as part of that event, but I never had the opportunity to acquire one as part of my job.

I decided to revisit the AirCheck after observing some positive discussion of the unit on Twitter, watching Devin Akin's Fluke webinar, and realizing that its functionality appeared to align with my philosophy that airtime utilization is a key WLAN metric. I've only had a brief time hands-on with the AirCheck, but I'd like to highlight a few of my initial findings.

First and foremost, I view the AirCheck as primarily a tool for WLAN triage. When first stepping on-site to work with an existing WLAN that's experiencing problems, the AirCheck is a great tool to obtain an initial assessment of the environment. It Continue reading

‘Someone had an issue with this rack’

Yes, indeed, someone had an issue with this rack. That assessment and the picture come from a reader of the Reddit section devoted to networking.Here’s the full picture, followed by commentary from network professionals. Reddit/Juvey88 via Imgur Reactions:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How We Chose MongoDB for Ansible Tower System Tracking Feature

System Tracking

This is not a generic “Postgres vs. MongoDB” performance post. This post details the process of comparing Postgres vs. MongoDB with a particular use case in mind, System Tracking.

Desirable Databases Features

Postgres is a candidate database since it is already in use by Tower. MongoDB is the other database considered for an in depth analysis for many reasons including: (1) document store of the JSON structure, (2) arbitrary structure query support, (3) and the ability to run on a single machine and later scale.

Comparing the two databases begins with identifying our System Tracking requirements. What is System Tracking?

For Tower, System Tracking is time based snapshots of machine facts. Facts are key value pairs of system state. The inspiration comes from the open source Ansible. Ansible facts will be supported in System Tracking along with 3 other fact types: packages (i.e. rpm or apt-get), services (i.e. mongodb, apache2), and files (i.e. /var/log/message). We support these 3 facts as fact modules. We also want to allow for customer built modules. Facts generated by the 4 core modules plus user created modules would be stored in Tower’s System Tracking database; allowing customers to take advantage Continue reading

Worth Reading: Commoditization of the Black Market

Internet crime has become increasingly dependent on the underground economy: a loose federation of specialists selling capabilities, services, and resources explicitly tailored to the abuse ecosystem. Through these emerging markets,modern criminal entrepreneurs piece together dozens of àla carte components into entirely new criminal endeavors.

A paper of interest.

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Dated

"

The more up-to-date a book is, the sooner it will be dated.

" C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcom —

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Symantec: Well-heeled hacking group Black Vine behind Anthem breach

A group has been singled out as the attacker behind the recently disclosed hack against Anthem, believed to be the largest waged against a health care company.It was Black Vine that broke into the health insurer's systems and stole more than 80 million patients records, Symantec said Tuesday in a report.For Black Vine, it was the latest in a long line of hacks that began in 2012. Black Vine has gone after other businesses that deal with sensitive and critical data, including organizations in the aerospace, technology and finance industries, according to Symantec. The majority of the attacks (82 percent) were waged against U.S. businesses.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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