Microsoft predicts China’s air pollution with data analysis

Microsoft has taken its big data analysis to China, with computing models that can forecast the air quality across 41 cities in the country.Pollution continues to be a major problem in China, with hazardous air quality levels a common occurrence in cities including Beijing. To bring some clarity to the situation, Microsoft has come up with a mobile app that can predict the air quality two days in advance.The Your Weather app works by first taking official data from government air quality monitoring stations across a 300 kilometer distance, and then using weather data to predict the pollution levels. The weather data used includes forecasts, along with current information on humidity, temperature and wind direction in a selected city.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Should I Use a Traditional Firewall in Microsegmented Environment?

One of my readers wondered whether one still needs traditional firewalls in microsegmented environments like VMware NSX.

As always, it depends.

Apple Mail flaw could pose risk to iCloud passwords

A security researcher says a vulnerability in Apple’s mobile email application could be used to trick someone into divulging their iCloud password.Prague-based Jan Soucek published proof-of-concept code that shows how he could send an email to someone with HTML code that resembles the iCloud login pop-up window. Soucek then receives an email containing the password.The vulnerability allows remote HTML content to be loaded in an email, which replaces the content of the email message. Soucek wrote he then built a functional password collector using HTML and CSS. He also published a demonstration video.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco Security Has a Job Waiting for John Chambers

Security is pervasive to networking, so it's an area Chambers will keep an eye on.

‘Your PC may be infected!’ Inside the shady world of antivirus telemarketing

Scotty Zifka was looking for a sales job. He started one in late May at a company called EZ Tech Support, a small inbound call center in an older building in northeast Portland, Oregon.The first day of Zifka’s unpaid training involved listening in on sales calls. But within three hours, Zifka felt something wasn’t quite right.“Everything about it was so weird,” he recalled.The company’s 15 agents answer calls from people who’ve seen a pop-up message saying their computer may be having problems, and advising them to call a number, which rings at the offices of EZ Tech Support.The agents are instructed to stick to a 13-page script. They ask callers whether they have an antivirus program installed. If they do, Zifka said, callers are usually told that whatever they’re using isn’t a “full-time real spectrum virus protection program.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BRKSEC-2139: Advanced Malware Protection

Presenter: Eric Howard, Techincal Marketing Engineer

Why aren’t we stopping all the malware???

The term “APT” has become the boogey man of cyber security. :-)

You don’t need to know squat about writing malware in order to launch malware

• Malware rentals
• Malware as a Service (swipe CC, pay bitcoin)

Why aren’t we stopping all the malware?

1. To solve the malware problem is to follow a very involved, multi-step process. Not every step can be automated; humans are needed (analysis, triage, more). This makes the process expensive, too.
2. There’s no silver bullet

Product does not solve the issue. Process is required, too. Ideally, good process backed by good product.

If you knew you were going to be compromised, would you do security differently? — Marty Roesch, Cheif Architect, Cisco Security, founder of Sourcefire

Do security different:

• Plan A – Prevention: shore up the environment; dig a bigger moat, build thicker walls
• Plan B – Retrospection: track system behaviors without regard for disposition (ie, do this for everything, not just known malware but also “known good” and “unknown”)

Plan A

• 1-to-1 signatures: like anti-virus; also hashes; AV vendors only enable 8-10% of their rules; AMP cloud runs all sigs all the time; Continue reading

BRKDCT-2333 — Data Center Network Failure Detection

Presenter: Arkadiy Shapiro, Manager Technical Marketing (Nexus 2000 - 7000) @ArkadiyShapiro

“You could say I'm obsessed with BFD” -Arkadiy

Fast failure detection is the key to fast convergence.

BRKSEC-2137 — Snort Implementation in Cisco Products

Presenter: Eric Kostlan, Technical Marketing Engineer, Cisco Security Technologies Group

“Above all, Snort is a community” -Eric

Snort stats

• over 4 million downloads
• nearly 500,000 registered users

Snort was created in 1998 (!!). Sourcefire founded in 2001.

Jawbone again sues Fitbit, this time claiming patent infringement

Jawbone has filed its second lawsuit against Fitbit in less than two weeks, claiming its activity tracking products infringe several of Jawbone’s patents.The new suit, filed Wednesday in San Francisco by Jawbone parent company AliphCom, seeks unspecified damages and an injunction to block the sale of Fitbit devices such as the Flex, Charge and Surge bands.Late last month, Jawbone filed another lawsuit, accusing Fitbit of poaching its employees and stealing trade secrets. Fitbit has said it has no knowledge of any such information in its possession.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BRKCRS-3900: NBase-T and the Evolution of Ethernet

Presenters: Dave Zacks, Distinguished Engineer; Peter Zones, Principle Engineer

History has been: 10x performnce increase at 3x the cost. 40Gb broke that model –> 100Gb PHYs were very expensive; industry needed/wanted an intermediate step.

Ethernet has a really strong roadmap and will continue to evolve for a very long time. Roadmap: http://www.ethernetalliance.org/roadmap/

• 25Gb – direct server connect (Twinax)
• 40GBase-T (Cat 8 cable!)
• 2.5/5G – N-BaseT
• 400Gb
• More

SERDES

• Serializer/deserializer
• Turns bits on the wire into bytes and vise-versa
• 40Gb Ethernet based on 4x10Gb SERDES

100m is the sweet spot for copper cable lengths. Why? CSMA/CD and also electrical wiring, placement of wiring closets just make 100m the right fit.

Cisco Mgig

• PoE/PoE+/UPoE
• Standards compliant
• Investment protection (existing cable plant)
• Supports 100M but not 10M; (had to drop something as far as standards and nobody uses 10M anymore really)

802.11ac Wave 2

• Max PHY rate: 6.8Gbps (in absolute best conditions)
• More likely 3-ish Gb/s
• Point: it’s more than 1Gbs

Cisco Mgig products:

• 4500E line card
• New 3850 models with Mgig ports
• New compact 3560CX with 2x Mgig ports

Between 2003 and 2014, approx 70 billion meters of Cat 5e and Cat 6 cabling were sold

Continue reading

Leveraging SD-WAN for Skype for Business Enterprise Voice

This guest blog post is by Daniel Teichman, Senior Manager, Product Marketing; and Brad Chapin, Director, Strategic Alliances, at Sonus. We thank Sonus for being a sponsor. Software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) technology is a viable option for organizations that have to provide real-time Unified Communications (UC), such as Microsoft’s Skype for Business Enterprise Voice, […]

Author information

Drew Conry-Murray

I'm a tech journalist, editor, and content director with 17 years' experience covering the IT industry. I'm author of the book "The Symantec Guide To Home Internet Security" and co-author of the post-apocalyptic novel "Wasteland Blues," available at Amazon.

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The post Leveraging SD-WAN for Skype for Business Enterprise Voice appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Drew Conry-Murray.

Why marketers are betting big on predictive analytics

Give a marketer a sale, and you’ll keep his company afloat for a day; teach him to predict future sales, and you may just ensure his longevity.That, in essence, is the premise behind predictive marketing, a concept that’s increasingly taking hold in enterprises today.Tapping into the analytics trend that’s being felt throughout the business world as a whole, predictive marketing applies algorithms and machine learning to big data to help marketers direct their efforts in the most profitable directions. Predictive-analytics tools can help marketers gauge ahead of time what a particular customer will buy, for example, as well as when and how much. Equipped with that information, companies can tailor their campaigns accordingly.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Get ready for more buy buttons on Facebook

When you’re not liking your friends’ photos on Facebook, you’re likely to soon have more opportunities to buy stuff.Facebook is expanding its partnership with Shopify, which helps businesses create online storefronts. Facebook has been testing buy buttons in the News Feed and on businesses’ Pages since last year, with select merchants participating. The new arrangement, announced Wednesday, means that a wider variety of businesses will be able to place buy buttons for their items in Facebook users’ feeds and on Pages.Shopify is describing the expanded service as a beta test with a group of U.S.-based Shopify merchants. The company did not name merchants, but it did publish an image of a Facebook post by jewelry designer Joseph Nogucci, with buy buttons in its posts for bracelets.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Top Tech CEOs Make 190 Times As Much As You

The New York Times and Equilar recently published a study of the 200 highest-paid CEOs of publicly traded companies. Twenty-two executives from the tech industry made the list, including leaders from hardware and software vendors, telco and cable companies, and Web giants. As you might expect, it pays to be a CEO. Microsoft’s Satya Nadella […]

Author information

Drew Conry-Murray

I'm a tech journalist, editor, and content director with 17 years' experience covering the IT industry. I'm author of the book "The Symantec Guide To Home Internet Security" and co-author of the post-apocalyptic novel "Wasteland Blues," available at Amazon.

TwitterLinkedIn

The post Top Tech CEOs Make 190 Times As Much As You appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Drew Conry-Murray.

Twitter, to curb abuse, lets users share block lists

Twitter, to reduce abusive content on its site, is letting users share lists of the people they block, so they can more easily silence those account holders on their own profiles.With the changes, users can save an exported file of the accounts they block to share with others. Users can import a list of the blocked accounts so they can block them all at once, rather than blocking the accounts individually.Twitter, in a blog post, said it hopes the tool will help people on the site who face similar problems or who experience high volumes of unwanted interactions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco boosts cloud software, lines up ISVs to write Internet of Everything services

SAN DIEGO -- Cisco this week enhanced its cloud software and lined up a roster of ISVs to create services for the company’s Internet of Everything initiative.Cisco added security, management and support for more hypervisors to its Intercloud Fabric software, an application that connects private, public and hybrid clouds together for workload mobility. Cisco also enlisted 35 software developers – including Citrix, F5, Cloudera, Hortonworks and Chef -- to build services for the Intercloud and offer them through an Intercloud Marketplace.Areas ISVs will target include development platforms for production applications, containers and community-based open source programs; big data and analytics; and IoE cloud services, such as network control, performance, security, data virtualization, energy management, and business services like collaboration and consistent portals from Cisco’s Services Exchange Platform.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NTSB wants auto industry to speed collision avoidance technology adoption

The National Transportation Safety Board this week said it wants to see auto collision avoidance technology implemented in cars more quickly and recommended that such equipment become standard on all new passenger and commercial vehicles.The NTSB said that only 4 out of 684 passenger vehicle models in 2014 included a complete forward collision avoidance system as a standard feature. When these systems are offered as options, they are often bundled with other non-safety features, making the overall package more expensive.“You don’t pay extra for your seatbelt,” said Chairman NTSB Christopher Hart in a statement. “And you shouldn’t have to pay extra for technology that can help prevent a collision altogether.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Installation Guide for Kali Linux

VMware patches virtual machine escape issue on Windows

VMware has released security updates for several of its virtualization products in order to address critical vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to break out of virtual machines and execute rogue code on the host operating systems.The code execution flaws affect the Windows versions of VMware Workstation, VMware Player and VMware Horizon Client. They were discovered by Kostya Kortchinsky of the Google Security Team and stem from a printer virtualization feature that allows a virtual machine’s guest OS to access the printer attached to the host computer.“On VMware Workstation 11.1, the virtual printer device is added by default to new VMs, and on recent Windows Hosts, the Microsoft XPS Document Writer is available as a default printer,” Kortchinsky explained in an advisory. “Even if the VMware Tools are not installed in the Guest, the COM1 port can be used to talk to the Host printing Proxy.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco ACI Gets a Taste of DevOps

Some programmer treats, new hardware, and a handshake with Microsoft highlight a mass of Cisco ACI enhancements.