IT Executive news

• BrandPost: Getting Started With Security Metrics

  01-10-2015 23:44
  
  A common question about security metrics is: “What are the top metrics that I should keep?” That’s usually asked in the context of someone who is thinking about getting started with a metrics program. And—spoiler alert—I’m not going to answer that question.Metrics can make security relevant to the businessHere’s why: a metrics process is how you tie your security program to your business objectives. In other words, it is an expression of how well you und
  
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• Retailers said to be weighing lawsuits over chip cards, fraud-liability shift

  01-10-2015 23:26
  
  U.S. retailers are contemplating lawsuits against banks and credit card companies over the slow rollout of chip-based card technology and the possible financial liability merchants began facing that started Oct. 1.
  Retailers that did not install newer chip-enabled point of sale terminals in stores, restaurants and hotels as of Oct. 1 have to pay an extra fee to cover counterfeit fraud. Before Thursday, banks were liable for consumers' use of magnetic stripe credit and debit cards. The liability
  
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• Hortonworks unveils big data scorecard

  01-10-2015 23:25
  
  NEW YORK CITY -- At Strata + Hadoop World here yesterday, Hadoop distribution specialist Hortonworks unveiled a new tool called the Hortonworks Big Data Scorecard designed to help organizations develop a plan for jumpstarting big data projects.[ Related: Hadoop, in trouble? Only in Gartner-land ]"Hortonworks has always been committed to partnering with customers to make their big data projects as successful as possible," Herb Cunitz, president of Hortonworks, said in a statement yesterday. "We a
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How the C-Suite Needs the CIO to Lead

  01-10-2015 22:07
  
  As the role of the CIO shifts, he or she must become adept at communicating the value of IT solutions to the business. Executives are looking to the CIO for insight into the best uses of technologies to create the most value for the organization.A recent Forbes article, titled “Top Five Lessons for CIOs from C-Suite Report,” says that "CIOs used to primarily deliver value as it pertained to collaboration through the tools that they purchased and supported. Now to a greater extent, th
  
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• Cortana can tell who you're meeting with thanks to new LinkedIn integration

  01-10-2015 21:59
  When getting together for a meeting with new people, it can be nice to know their background and what they do. That information is usually tied up in their social networking profiles, but it can be hard to remember to creep on someone until after they're right in front of you. Microsoft is aiming to make it easier for people to do just that with a new integration the company announced Thursday between its digital assistant Cortana and enterprise social network LinkedIn. When users connect t
  
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• Microsoft offers new way to laud your co-workers with Delve Web app

  01-10-2015 21:08
  
  It can be hard to keep track of all the great things individual people do in a fast-paced work environment on a day-to-day basis. Sending a quick thank-you note can be nice on a person-to-person level, but that doesn't always translate into an understanding by the powers that be about what people find praiseworthy.Microsoft is aiming to ease that process with a new feature for its Delve collaboration tool in Office 365 that lets users praise their co-workers digitally. To use the feature, users
  
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• New CIO sees potential in drones for rail inspection

  01-10-2015 20:54
  
  Cindy Earhart, CIO of Norfolk Southern.The modern CIO must serve as a jack of many trades, marrying technology and business strategy. As Cindy Earhart takes the reins as Norfolk Southern’s new CIO, she brings with her experience working in finance, IT and human resources roles over her 30-year career at the freight train operator. She says that cross-departmental experience will serve her well as her department, seeking operational efficiencies, experiments with drones and increases its us
  
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• Microsoft stays in the on-premises email server game with launch of Exchange 2016

  01-10-2015 20:32
  
  Microsoft has been aggressively pushing its cloud services for applications such as email, but it also remains committed to selling software that customers run in their own data centers. That's why, on Thursday morning, the company released Exchange Server 2016.
  The latest version of Microsoft's calendaring and mail server product includes several new features for enterprise customers, including a set of improvements to the web-based Outlook experience, eDiscovery functionality, collaboration a
  
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• Hospitals flip the ICD-10 switch, adding 68,000 ways to tell you're sick

  01-10-2015 20:27
  
  Linda Reed, the CIO at Atlantic Health, one of the largest nonprofit health care systems in New Jersey, is hoping today's changeover to the new ICD-10 medical coding system will be like Y2K -- all build up, no catastrophe.
  "We know there will be issues. We're thinking we'll see them next week," Reed said, referring to when insurance companies will begin approving or denying medical treatments based on the new codes. "There are just so many moving parts."
  After two major deadline extensions, the
  
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• IBM carbon nanotube breakthrough could bring faster, smaller chips

  01-10-2015 20:00
  
  Researchers at IBM say they've made a major breakthrough in carbon nanotube technology that could speed the development of smaller, more powerful chips.The team has figured out a way to connect carbon nanotubes -- tiny, conducting tubes of carbon atoms -- with silicon transistors in such a way that the size of the connection doesn't adversely affect its electrical properties.Shrinking the size of transistors and their associated circuitry is vital if chip technology is going to follow Moore's La
  
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• Report: Target failed to execute security basics

  01-10-2015 19:30
  Verizon consultants probed Target’s network for weaknesses in the immediate aftermath of the company’s 2013 breach and came back with results that point to one overriding – if not dramatic - lesson: be sure to implement basic security best practices.
  In a recent KrebsOnSecurity post, Brian Krebs details Verizon’s findings as set down in a Target corporate report.
  The findings demonstrate that it really is important to put in place all the mundane security best practices
  
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• Windows 10 growth slows, but breaks 100M device mark

  01-10-2015 19:26
  
  Windows 10's user share growth slowed significantly in September, but by the month's end approximately 110 million customers were running the new OS, data released today signaled.
  According to U.S. analytics company Net Applications, Windows 10's user share -- a measure of the fraction of unique users who ran the OS when they went online -- grew 1.4 percentage points in September to 6.6%.
  Microsoft launched Windows 10 on July 29, making September the second full month that the upgrade for Windo
  
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• Grails gets cozy with AngularJS for better JavaScript

  01-10-2015 18:23
  The Grails Web application framework will be paired with the AngularJS JavaScript framework to help developers build SPAs (single-page applications).
  Version 3.1 of Grails, due by the end of this year, will feature an AngularJS profile with targeted plug-ins and code generation capabilities for rapidly building SPAs, said Graeme Rocher, who leads the design and development of Grails.
  "With front ends typically being created using native clients or JavaScript, single-page frameworks such as
  
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• Windows 10 adoption has slowed down considerably

  01-10-2015 18:14
  
  Windows 10 uptake is falling back to earth after an explosive first month.
  According to StatCounter, Windows 10 accounted for 7.64 percent of desktop Internet usage in September, compared to 5.38 percent the month prior. Rival metrics firm NetApplications pegs Windows 10 usage at 6.63 percent, compared to 5.21 percent in August.Three months of desktop operating system usage from StatCounter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Former Autonomy CEO Lynch sues HP for $150 million

  01-10-2015 18:01
  Making good on the promise he made earlier this year, former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch on Thursday filed a $150 million lawsuit against HP over what he called a public smear campaign against him and other Autonomy executives.“Over the past three years, HP has made many statements that were highly damaging to me and misleading to the stock market," Lynch said. "HP knew, or should have known, these statements were false."HP's ill-fated 2011 acquisition of the British software maker for $11.7 b
  
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• How to identify and thwart insider threats

  01-10-2015 18:00
  
  It is often cited that an enterprise’s employees are its biggest vulnerability. What are company’s doing about it? In a significant number of cases, companies are perhaps doing nothing.According to the SANS Institute and SpectorSoft, 74 percent of the 772 IT security professionals they recently surveyed are “concerned about malicious employees.” The survey pool spans 10 industries including financial, government, and technology and IT services. The survey data also shows
  
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• Lies, damned lies and benchmarks

  01-10-2015 17:59
  
  It always struck me, as I recoiled from the stink of diesel fumes on the interstate, that the notion of “clean” diesel had to be wrong. It turns out I was right — at least in the case of Volkswagen, which cheated on emissions tests for about 11 million vehicles. Now countries are banning sales of the makes that had been programmed to lie about pollution results.
  Shocking? Only if you think that VW is the only company that’s ever shipped products that faked test results.
  
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• Samsung denies its TVs game power consumption tests

  01-10-2015 17:26
  
  Samsung Electronics has denied allegations that it designed its TVs to consume less energy during tests than they do in real-world situations.The allegations, in a report by The Guardian, center on a feature Samsung calls "motion lighting," which it introduced to its TVs in 2011.Some Samsung TVs in Europe appeared to use less energy during independent laboratory tests than they do in real-world conditions, the newspaper reported, saying this raised questions about whether they had been programme
  
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• Cisco fixes privilege escalation flaws in AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client

  01-10-2015 17:01
  The Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client has been updated to fix vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to gain system or root privileges on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X computers.The AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client allows employees to work remotely by securely connecting back to their company's network. It provides virtual private networking over SSL and additional features like identity services, network access control and Web security.The vulnerability in the Linux and Mac OS X versio
  
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• Government cloud adoption efforts lag as security concerns persist

  01-10-2015 16:27
  
  When the Obama administration's CIO declared that the government would move to a cloud-first policy for its technology procurements, it was sending a clear message that agencies would be expected to modernize their IT shops.But five years later, that transition still seems like it's in its early stages, according to Mark Kneidinger, director of the Federal Network Resilience Division at the Department of Homeland Security.[ Related: How Cloud Vendors Can Win Over Skeptical Federal Buyers ]"In 20
  
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• Just what is a smart city?

  01-10-2015 16:22
  
  What's a "smart city"?But then, he added, "Really, a smart city is about having sensor data that then gets used to create actions. You can define a smart city as a city with better managed infrastructure that is variable, based on input of data and adjustments of the results to best utilize resources or improve safety."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Sprint's unlimited data plan is getting more expensive

  01-10-2015 15:25
  
  Sprint is raising the price of its unlimited plan by $10 a month, and it wants you to love it.
  As of October 16, new customers signing up for Sprint’s unlimited talk, text, and data plan will pay $70 per month before taxes and fees. Current Sprint customers paying $60 per month for their unlimited plan will not be affected by the price hike. Anyone considering a move to Sprint must do so by October 15 to get locked into the $60 unlimited plan.
  A price increase just plain sucks, even
  
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• Drones and VR give pro surf league fans beachside views

  01-10-2015 15:15
  
  Many modern sports organizations look to advanced cameras for a technology edge. The NFL uses cameras on wires; the NBA has hoop cameras; and NASCAR uses cameras inside some racecars to show viewers different points of view, for example. Now professional surf organization World Surf League (WSL) is catching on, incorporating drones and other new technologies to improve broadcasts and encourage more fans to tune in. [Related Feature: Fan experience key to success of drones, VR in pro sports]
  
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• Nest aims for central role in connected homes, enticing developers to integrate

  01-10-2015 15:00
  
  The big winners in connected homes will be vendors of whole platforms, not individual products, and Google's Nest division is pushing hard to play that role. After pioneering Thread, a low-power networking protocol, Nest is now introducing an application layer that device and appliance makers can use to integrate their products tightly with Nest's. The new tool, called Weave, is for direct interactions between devices without resorting to processing in the cloud. That's good for in-hom
  
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• 5 conversations CIOs must have with their C-suite peers

  01-10-2015 14:43
  
  CIOs can no longer be content to run financial software and other business applications from a data center. Modern consumer demands require CIOs to ask themselves this key question: How do I grow the business in a increasingly connected landscape where companies are struggling to ensure they stay in lockstep with rapidly evolving consumer preferences for digital technologies?Bill Bradley is having those very discussions as CIO of telecommunications company CenturyLink, where he is doing double d
  
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• How Applebee's uses gamification to retain staff, boost sales

  01-10-2015 14:00
  
  Retaining staff and preventing constant turnover are two of the most significant challenges in the restaurant business. For the second largest franchisee of Applebee's restaurants, turnover was a costly problem. At one point, the franchisee experienced 120 percent annual turnover, and it cost $400 to $10,000 to replace individual employees, depending on seniority. The franchisee also didn't have any sort of modern rewards and recognition program to motivate its largely millennial employee base.&
  
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• 11 most memorable social media marketing successes of 2015

  01-10-2015 14:00
  
  Social media marketing hits on Instagram, Periscope, Snapchat and TumblrImage by ThinkstockFacebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are still the go-to social media channels for the majority of digital marketers, but in the past year or two, many brands turned to younger social networks to experiment with edgy, funny and, some say, more interesting campaigns. Companies such as GoPro, Nordstrom and Spotify made big impressions on Instagram, while some unlikely names — Hillary Clinton and Taco Bell,
  
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• Mobile device management has become alphabet soup

  01-10-2015 13:45
  
  Get a job and a company-issued cellphone and computer in exchange? Stop living in the past, man. Companies don’t necessarily operate this way anymore, especially as our work and personal lives become more and more intertwined. But BYOD isn't the only acronym in the game, especially since employees are pushing back. According to a recent survey conducted by Bitglass, 57 percent of employees – and 38 percent of IT professionals – do not participate in their company's BYOD pr
  
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• New Android vulnerabilities put over a billion devices at risk of remote hacking

  01-10-2015 13:05
  Newly discovered vulnerabilities in the way Android processes media files can allow attackers to compromise devices by tricking users into visiting maliciously-crafted Web pages.The vulnerabilities can lead to remote code execution on almost all devices that run Android, starting with version 1.0 of the OS released in 2008 to the latest 5.1.1, researchers from mobile security firm Zimperium said in a report scheduled to be published Thursday.The flaws are in the way Android processes the metadat
  
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• How to reverse-engineer finding elite tech talent

  01-10-2015 12:41
  
  Have you ever wished you could clone your best employees? Or wished you could identify exactly what makes them tick so that your next recruiting push would be a guaranteed success?
  Online learning and collaboration platform Piazza is rolling out a new feature set that it says lets recruiters, hiring managers and member companies do just that -- identify the characteristics that set your top talent apart and use those to select potential candidates.More of the sameWhen Piazza's management team as
  
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• Scraping away profits

  01-10-2015 12:34
  
  At technology company Graphiq, Web-scraping bots were becoming more than just a nuisance. They were impacting its bottom line.The company collects and interprets billions of data points from thousands of online data sources and turns them into visual graphs that website visitors can use for free. Scrapers were extracting data from hundreds of millions of these pages and building duplicate sites. “We don’t want people to reuse [our data] commercially for free because there is a c
  
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• With iPad Pro, Apple pushes further into the enterprise

  01-10-2015 12:30
  
  When it unveiled the new iPad Pro, Apple effectively dropped into place the hardware piece of its burgeoning enterprise strategy, positioning the tablet as a potential go-to device for business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Owens Corning can see customer orders at a glance

  01-10-2015 12:30
  
  Owens Corning is posting historically high marks for on-time deliveries of products and invoice accuracy these days, which fits squarely with the company's emphasis on customer service.The improvements stem from a global technology overhaul that gives employees better visibility into operations so they can spot problems that could delay a customer's order.It's a significant improvement over how operations used to work, says Steven Zerby, vice president and CIO of the $5.3 billion manufacturer of
  
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• The holy grail of digital transformation: Improved employee efficiency

  01-10-2015 12:24
  
  As organizations embrace digital technologies to transform their businesses, one key metric sits clearly in their sights: Employee productivity.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• The price of free: how Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Google sell you to advertisers

  01-10-2015 12:00
  
  Jumping from Windows 7 directly to Windows 10 has to be something like a farmer visiting Times Square. Live Tiles flash and move. A nice assistant named Cortana always hovers nearby. Click on the wrong spot and you could be whisked away elsewhere on the Web. And there are always people asking who you are, where you live, what you like...
  Because the latest version of Windows is always asking for information in the guise of being helpful, it’s easy to think that Microsoft’s the poste
  
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• Can a NAS box run your entire SMB?

  01-10-2015 12:00
  
  It's a good thing storage keeps getting less expensive because we keep needing more of it. And if you're looking for a desktop Network Attached Storage device, the current crop of NAS appliances should make you happy. Every box we tested worked well, provided boatloads of storage, and many cost less today per terabyte than they did just a few years ago.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Best NAS boxes for small business

  01-10-2015 12:00
  
  Boatloads of storageIf you're looking for a desktop Network Attached Storage device, the current crop of NAS appliances should make you happy. Every box we tested worked well, provided boatloads of storage, and many cost less today per terabyte than they did just a few years ago. Four of the seven units we tested come with enough software, mostly free open source applications, to run a complete small business and provide Web hosting. The seven products are from QNAP, Thecus, ZyXEL, ioSafe, Buffa
  
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• Uitgever AD, Volkskrant en Parool vernieuwt netwerk

  01-10-2015 10:34
  Uitgever De Persgroep heeft netwerkleverancier Colt gekozen voor de vernieuwing van zijn bedrijfskritische netwerkverbindingen tussen de 40 verschillende vestigingen in Nederland en 2 datacenters in België. De vernieuwing van het netwerk volgt op een reeks overnames waarbij de nieuwe locaties met het centrale... lees meer
  
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• Rhapsody looks at kids as a new opportunity

  01-10-2015 08:27
  Streaming music service Rhapsody has launched a version for kids that limits their access to only tailored programming and content that parents add.The company said it was adding the service as many of its customers have moved into "a new chapter of their life" and would like to share music with their kids.Other music and video providers have also targeted the kids market. YouTube, for example, launched a service for kids, but the service has been dogged by controversies over advertising and ina
  
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• IBM brings Bluemix behind the firewall for sensitive workloads

  01-10-2015 06:05
  
  IBM’s Bluemix development platform is already available in public and hosted private cloud versions. On Thursday, the company announced a third option for customers that need to build apps behind a firewall.Called Bluemix Local, it adds new hybrid cloud app-development capabilities, giving enterprises the ability to build apps securely and deploy them easily across public, private and on-premise environments."It allows you to build a true hybrid app," said Damion Heredia, IBM's vice presid
  
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• Microsoft accidentally releases Windows 7 'test' patch, freaks out users

  01-10-2015 03:14
  
  The mystery of the disappearing Windows 7 patch has been solved.
  On Wednesday, a number of Microsoft users took to the company’s support forums to ask about a mysterious update, KB3877432, which identified itself as a language pack for Windows 7. Users became concerned when the patch subsequently disappeared.
  As it turns out, the update was released in error, Microsoft confirmed. ”We incorrectly published a test update and are in the process of removing it,” a Microsoft spokes
  
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• Google, NASA using quantum computing to push A.I., machine learning

  01-10-2015 03:13
  
  Google and NASA are continuing to test quantum computers and this week entered into a new agreement to work with a series of updated systems.
  D-Wave Systems, a quantum computing company based in Burnaby, British Columbia, announced this week that it had signed a deal to install a succession of D-Wave systems at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.NASA and Google on Wednesday also confirmed the deal.
  NASA and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) are colla
  
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• Hillary Clinton aides worried about antiquated technology, use of personal email

  01-10-2015 02:11
  Senior aides to Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state expressed concerns about the poor level of computer technology at the State Department and the use of personal email by staffers, according to emails released Wednesday.In one email sent on June 3, 2011, a day after Google revealed its Gmail service had been targeted by hackers likely based in China, Anne Marie Slaughter expressed her frustration to Clinton about the State Department's IT system."It would be a great time for someone
  
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• IBM-Box enterprise deal yields new content tools

  01-10-2015 01:57
  
  IBM and Box have started to deliver on a partnership they announced in June to help enterprises users share content and collaborate.The companies want to combine IBM's back-end smarts with Box's user experience in new tools for both local and cloud data. The ultimate aim is to help usher enterprises into the cloud era of content management. On Wednesday at the BoxWorks conference in San Francisco, IBM and Box announced two products that are available now and two others that are coming later
  
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• Microsoft, Google bury the hatchet with global patent deal

  01-10-2015 01:17
  
  Microsoft has been pursuing a more collaborative approach under CEO Satya Nadella, working with longtime rivals like Salesforce, VMware and Apple. There hasn't been much love between Microsoft and Google, though, but an announcement Wednesday may signal an easing of those tensions.Google and Microsoft have reached a broad agreement on patent matters, with a legal settlement ending some 20 lawsuits between the companies in the U.S. and Germany. Financial terms weren't disclosed, but the deal brin
  
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• BrandPost: Turning the Problem of Shadow IT into Opportunity

  01-10-2015 00:53
  
  The ease of deployment, use and maintenance of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications is something of a double-edged sword for IT departments. While they often let IT lower their support burdens and costs, they also effectively give every employee within an organization an easy way to circumvent IT altogether and acquire their own cloud-based tools without IT's involvement or knowledge.Known as “Shadow IT,” the practice of going around IT is fairly rampant; according to a survey c
  
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• IT leg-breakers: Exacting (small-scale) revenge in the digital age

  01-10-2015 00:34
  
  Extortion and ransomware on the riseImage by Christiaan Colen/FlickrExtortion and ransom are crimes that have been around for centuries, and their new high-tech iterations are among the chief nightmares for infosecurity pros. There's good reason for anxiety: ransomware, malware that literally holds computers hostage, is on the rise in 2015. And while ransomware has traditionally targeted poorly protected PCs, it's been moving up the stack into servers that hold sensitive financial information.To
  
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• 2015's most dangerous celebrity Web searches

  01-10-2015 00:14
  
  DJ Armin van BuurenImage by Jorge Mejía PeraltaElectronic Dance Music (EDM) DJ Armin van Buuren replaces comedian and talk show host Jimmy Kimmel as Intel Security’s most dangerous celebrity to search for online. For the ninth year in a row, Intel Security researched popular culture’s most famous people to reveal which of them generates the most dangerous search results.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Chip-card rollout drama peaks day before deadline

  01-10-2015 00:09
  
  Banks and credit-card companies claimed Wednesday that roughly half of U.S. consumers have received a new chip credit or debit card, while retailers continued to bemoan the chip card conversion process as too slow, too expensive and ineffectual in combating fraud.
  The battle pitting banks and card companies against retailers reached a low point on the day before Thursday’s deadline that requires merchants to install new card readers that can process payments with the new chip-embedded car
  
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