Planning your Windows Server 2003 migration: Tips and resources

Many companies not making the migration off of Windows Server 2003 before support ends in July cite cost as the reason; either they can't afford it or they haven't got the budget this year but will later in the year or next year. If you are in such a scenario, you should still begin preparing for the eventual move and not wait until you have the money to begin planning. That way you can hit the ground running when the funds are there. Endpoint security company Bit9 recommends several steps in the process:Don't do it alone: A smooth transition to a new platform will require full buy-in and agreement from any and all impacted stakeholders. That means not just the IT department, but the business units impacted and the budgeting finance team.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Beware the ticking Internet of Things security time bomb

IBM’s Andy Thurai didn’t quite put the words into former RSA CTO Deepak Taneja’s mouth, but did prompt him by asking at the start of a TIE Startup Con panel in Cambridge, Mass., earlier this month whether Internet of Things security is a “time bomb ready to explode.”Taneja responded that technology is advancing at a rate that’s outstripping enterprises’ ability to secure internal and cloud resources, and then along comes IoT in the form of all sorts of networked sensors and gadgets. “Organizations aren’t spending that much on security. It’s increasing, but it’s not enough and IoT only makes it worse,’ he said. “So it is a time bomb. “To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Check Point SmartLog – Recommended

Trigger warning for Check Point haters: I’m about to say nice things about Check Point.

Continuing the recent theme of Check Point-related posts, I’d like to give Check Point credit for once. SmartLog is what I always wanted from Tracker/Log Viewer, and they’re not even charging me extra for it. Shocking, I know.

Traditional Log Analysis

15-20 years ago, Check Point was well ahead of the competition when it came to viewing firewall logs. “Log Viewer” or “SmartView Tracker,”[1] let you filter logs by source, destination, service, etc., and quickly see what was happening. The GUI worked well enough, and junior admins could learn it quickly.

Most other firewalls only had syslog. That meant that your analysis tools were limited to grep and awk. Powerful yes, but a bit of a learning curve. There was also the problem of ‘saving’ a search – you’d end up hunting through your shell history, trying to recreate that 15-stage piped work of art. Splunk wasn’t around then.

Times Change

Tracker has several issues:

  • Log files are ‘flat’ files. It is a proprietary binary format, but it’s still flat, with no indexing. The format is very structured, but searches are slow when the files get large.
  • Searches Continue reading

IBM cloud will reach back into tape for low-cost storage

In the new world of cloud storage, there’s still room for old standbys like tape. IBM says combining them can save enterprises money.At its Edge conference in Las Vegas this week, the company will preview an archiving architecture that can span all tiers of storage from server-based flash cache to tape, moving data to the best and most cost-effective tier at any time based on enterprise policies.Enterprises are accumulating growing volumes of data, including new types such as surveillance video that may never be used on a regular basis but need to be stored for a long time. At the same time, new big-data analytics tools are making old and little-used data useful for gleaning new insights into business and government. IBM is going after customers in health care, social media, oil and gas, government and other sectors that want to get to all of their data no matter where it’s stored.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

After trying its own data center, Zynga retreats to the cloud

In a surprising move, game maker Zynga tried to do its own data center thing, then went back to the cloud, reports the Wall Street Journal.Was it a game of chicken, to see who would bleed first between Zynga and Amazon? Or was it a venture where, as the WSJ cites, you discover that your groove doesn't involve adding expertise in a field where lowering your costs may not pay off? Sorry to sound cryptic. Let me explain.The capex of running a data center can be gruesome. Even with way-cool software-defined routing, eco-cooling, and plentiful cheap connectivity, they're still expensive. The payback is going to come in decades, one can only hope. In the old days, organizations would install a bunker of a data center, often deep in the sub-basements of a building, designing all for the long term, and sinking cooling and initial infrastructure costs that would include some wild-haired expansion factor over the perceived life of the building.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Controversial MacKeeper security program opens critical hole on Mac computers

A critical vulnerability in MacKeeper, a controversial security program for Mac computers, could let attackers execute malicious commands on Macs when their owners visit specially crafted Web pages.MacKeeper’s developers acknowledged the recently discovered problem and released a fix for it Friday, saying in a blog post that users should run MacKeeper Update Tracker and install version 3.4.1 or later.MacKeeper registers itself as the handler for a custom URL scheme, allowing websites to automatically call the application through the browser.Researcher Braden Thomas found an issue in the program’s validation of such URLs that makes it possible for attackers to execute arbitrary commands with root privilege when MacKeeper users visit a specially crafted website in Safari. As a proof of concept, he posted a link on Twitter that automatically executes a command to remove MacKeeper when clicked.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Why Wi-Fi will be the technology of choice for the Internet of Things

With projections of more than 5 billion connected devices by the end of this year and growth to 50 billion by 2020, the challenges facing the Internet of Things (IoT) include a lack of standardization, security, integration, battery life, and rapid evolution. Wi-Fi, in its 16th year, is getting ready for IoT and will perhaps make the most suitable network for the technology.IoT may be a recent buzzword, but the quest for connected things is old. Very old. Caller ID, connected Coca-Cola vending machines, M2M, smart meters, RFID, AutoID, etc. The whole appeal of connected things has been efficiency and experience. And the desire for experience and efficiency is even greater today. We live in an experience era and have no patience. We expect 'great experience' and 'efficiency' around us. Only IoT can enable that. IoT is nothing but an intelligent and invisible network of things that communicate directly or indirectly with each other or the internet to enable experience and efficiency.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Why Wi-Fi will be the technology of choice for the Internet of Things

With projections of more than 5 billion connected devices by the end of this year and growth to 50 billion by 2020, the challenges facing the Internet of Things (IoT) include a lack of standardization, security, integration, battery life, and rapid evolution. Wi-Fi, in its 16th year, is getting ready for IoT and will perhaps make the most suitable network for the technology.IoT may be a recent buzzword, but the quest for connected things is old. Very old. Caller ID, connected Coca-Cola vending machines, M2M, smart meters, RFID, AutoID, etc. The whole appeal of connected things has been efficiency and experience. And the desire for experience and efficiency is even greater today. We live in an experience era and have no patience. We expect 'great experience' and 'efficiency' around us. Only IoT can enable that. IoT is nothing but an intelligent and invisible network of things that communicate directly or indirectly with each other or the internet to enable experience and efficiency.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

GPU malware can also affect Windows PCs, possibly Macs

A team of anonymous developers who recently created a Linux rootkit that runs on graphics cards has released a new proof-of-concept malware program that does the same on Windows. A Mac OS X implementation is also in the works.The developers are trying to raise awareness that malware can infect GPUs and that the security industry is not ready for it. Their goal isn’t to tip off malicious hackers, but the source code they released, while incomplete and buggy by design, could potentially be built upon and used for illegal purposes.The problem the developers are trying to highlight lies not with the operating systems, such as Windows or Linux, nor with the GPU (graphics processor unit) vendors, but rather with existing security tools, which aren’t designed to scan the random access memory (RAM) used by GPUs for malware code.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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