IT Executive news

• CISA sails through Senate despite tech opposition

  27-10-2015 23:34
  
  The U.S. Senate approved a controversial cybersecurity bill on Tuesday, despite opposition from major tech companies and privacy advocates who fear it will lead to more of citizens' private information going to the U.S. government.The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) (S.754) passed by 74 to 21 votes after a day of debate. It needed 60 votes to pass.The bill seeks to encourage greater sharing of information between private companies and the government on cybersecurity threats and
  
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• Apple sales, profit surge on iPhone strength

  27-10-2015 23:30
  
  Apple logged another healthy rise in sales and profits for its most recent quarter on the strength of record iPhone sales and strong results for Macs.The company's revenue rose 22 percent from a year earlier to $51.5 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter ended Sept. 26. Sales of iPhones reached a fourth-quarter record and the company said it sold more Macs than ever. Sixty-two percent of revenue came from outside the U.S., and revenue in China nearly doubled.The company's profit grew even more st
  
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• MIT Media Lab turns 30

  27-10-2015 23:01
  
  Happy 30thThe MIT Media Lab will celebrate its 30th anniversary on Oct. 30 with an invitation-only symposium hosted by Penn & Teller, a choice which seems more than fitting given how much of the center’s work over the years has appeared magical before being woven into our everyday lives. What follows is a representative sample of the lab’s better known accomplishments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Tim Cook says 30 percent of iPhone buyers are switching from Android

  27-10-2015 22:57
  Apple keeps breaking records with the number of iPhones it sells each quarter, but CEO Tim Cook isn’t worried about that growth slowing down. Why? Android.
  Cook said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call Tuesday afternoon that 30 percent of new iPhone buyers in the quarter that ended in late September were switching from Android, which is a new record. And just two days of iPhone 6s and 6s Plus sales were included in the company’s Q4 earnings, so that percentage of
  
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• Strengthen your network security with Passive DNS

  27-10-2015 21:24
  
  Over the past few years, we’ve witnessed increasing attacks against DNS infrastructure: DDoS attacks against authoritative name servers, name servers used as amplifiers in DDoS attacks, compromised registrar accounts used to modify delegation information, cache poisoning attacks, and abuse of name servers by malware. Thankfully, we’ve also seen the concurrent development of powerful new mechanisms for combating those threats, including the DNS Security Extensions, response policy zo
  
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• We're looking for an Energetic Principal Sales Consultant for the Central US Region!

  27-10-2015 21:00
  
  We are looking for an energetic, self-starting Principal Sales Consultant for the Mid-West/Central region who can formulate and lead pre-sales technical/functional support activities while maintaining the highest level of customer satisfaction. 
  
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• Oracle pushes into AWS territory with new IaaS services

  27-10-2015 19:57
  
  Oracle set its sights on a bigger piece of the cloud pie Tuesday with new IaaS services that put it in more direct competition with Amazon Web Services.The new IaaS services were introduced by Thomas Kurian, Oracle's president of product development, at its OpenWorld show in San Francisco.First, Oracle Elastic Compute Cloud allows customers to chose between elastic and dedicated compute options. Elastic Compute offers the ability to run any workload in the cloud in a shared compute zone, while t
  
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• Need SDN control but don’t want to upgrade your Cisco switches? VMware wants to talk

  27-10-2015 19:41
  
  Martin Casado was in on the ground floor of the development of Software Defined Networking (SDN) at Stanford, and today flies the network virtualization flag at VMware where he is Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Networking and Security Business Unit.  Casado says VMware has racked up significant wins with its NSX technology, and says it is a good alternative to Cisco’s SDN approach in ACI, or at least a great complement. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recentl
  
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• IBM, Jasper connect IoT devices in the field to analytics behind the scenes

  27-10-2015 19:38
  
  Jasper Technologies has been connecting Internet of Things gear for years. A new partnership with IBM will help companies do more with the data that comes out of those devices.The two companies will integrate Jasper's device provisioning and monitoring system with the IBM IoT Foundation, a platform-as-a-service offering for analyzing data in the cloud.Much of the value of IoT lies in what enterprises and consumers can do with the data their networks collect. Large-scale cloud computing is expand
  
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• HP CIO says today's IT leaders need to 'co-design and co-create'

  27-10-2015 19:31
  
  HPRalph Loura, CIO Enterprise Group, HP
  I have always enjoyed talking with Ralph Loura, CIO of HP's Enterprise Group. Loura talks as easily about big ideas, such as the future of IT, as he does about the nitty gritty of network architecture. In our most recent conversation, Loura discussed the evolving CIO role, what makes DevOps work, and offersed advice for tomorrow's CIOs.
  Martha Heller: How would you describe the CIO role today?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click
  
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• Drone carrying drugs, hacksaw blades crashes in Oklahoma prison

  27-10-2015 19:23
  
  A drone carrying drugs, a cell phone, hacksaw blades and other contraband was discovered crashed in an Oklahoma prison yard on Monday morning.Officers patrolling the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester noticed the drone lying upside down inside prison grounds at about 9 a.m. having apparently crashed after hitting razor wire that guarded the facility.Upon investigation, they found a package of illicit material had been suspended from the drone by fishing line. It included two 12-i
  
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• Firefox's new anti-tracking features best Chrome and Edge

  27-10-2015 19:04
  
  You wouldn't think a quick visit to the website of left-leaning MSNBC would result in an encounter with the National Rifle Association (NRA). But last night it did for me.
  I was testing the latest version of Mozilla's Firefox browser, which features enhanced anti-user-tracking protections. (You can find more details about the update here.) As I scrolled down the MSNBC.com page, I saw that part of it was obscured by a gray box. That's Firefox's new way to tell you that some content on a page wan
  
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• Microsoft's Surface Pro 4 has one of the best tablet displays ever seen

  27-10-2015 18:29
  
  The Microsoft Surface Pro 4 breaks a number of tablet display performance records, including consuming a surprisingly meager amount of power for its size, display expert Ray Soneira says.
  The SP4 also improves considerably over the Surface Pro 3, which also had a well-regarded display, in almost every way, Soniera concluded in a report released on Tuesday. It also has the most accurate on-screen colors of any tablet display that he has ever measured, he wrote:To read this article in full o
  
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• South Korean manufacturing industry targeted with new backdoor program

  27-10-2015 18:10
  South Korean organizations are being targeted in attacks with a new stealthy backdoor program that gives attackers full access to infected computers.The malware has been dubbed Duuzer and while it's not exclusively used against targets in South Korea, it does seem that the hacker group behind it have a preference for that country's manufacturing industry, according to security firm Symantec.Duuzer was designed to work on both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows versions and opens a back door through which
  
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• 6 business lessons of Rock, Paper, Scissors

  27-10-2015 18:04
  
  Sometime in the Han Dynasty in China between 206 BC and 220 AD the game of Rock, Paper, Scissors was born. It’s a two-player game. The opponents face each other and at a signal like “1-2-3-Go!” each player vigorously extends a hand out as a gesture.The gestures are one of the following: Rock (as a fist), Scissors (as a V made with two or four fingers) or Paper (represented by your palm, fingers together). The winner is determined by the logic: Rock beats Scissor (it has the pow
  
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• Telogis and Apple partner to improve the iPhone's enterprise chops

  27-10-2015 17:30
  
  Apple has lined up a growing list of partners to help it improve the enterprise capabilities of its mobile devices. Now it's turned to Telogis, a provider of software solutions for managing fleets of mobile workers, which will refine its existing iOS apps and build new experiences for Apple's mobile platforms.Partnerships like this one, and existing deals with IBM and Cisco, are key if Apple wants to see the iPhone and iPad take greater hold in the business world without trying to build its own
  
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• Surface Pro 4 teardown confirms fanless m3 design, smaller battery

  27-10-2015 17:04
  
  The entry-level version of Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4 could be easier on your ears as well as your wallet.
  That’s because the Core m3 processor inside the $899 is the only one that doesn’t use a fan for active cooling. As noted by iFixit in its Surface Pro 4 teardown, the entry-level model has an empty space next to its motherboard, where a fan likely resides in the Core i5 and Core i7 versions.
  iFixit’s teardown also confirms that the Surface Pro 4 has a nine percent sma
  
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• LTE-U: A quick explainer

  27-10-2015 16:53
  
  LTE-U is a wireless network technology that’s promising a lot, as well as ruffling a few feathers (especially in the Wi-Fi world). Here’s a brief rundown for the perplexed.OK, so what’s LTE-U?LTE-U is a system of wireless communication designed to use unlicensed spectrum – which is open to everybody, within certain limits – to ease the burden on big mobile carriers’ networks. Regular LTE is the system they use to transmit and receive information across their l
  
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• We're looking for a Passionate ServiceNow Senior Engagement Manager!

  27-10-2015 16:30
  
  Wanted: Innovative, ServiceNow Guru with an uncanny ability to see solutions before our clients realize they need them.
  
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• Microsoft's advice: Hang up on tech support scammers

  27-10-2015 16:29
  
  Microsoft's best advice to combat tech support scams? Hang up the phone.
  "You get a call from someone that's unsolicited, talking about technical support, hang up," said David Finn, the executive director of Microsoft's Digital Crime Unit, during a hearing held by the U.S. Senate last week. "That's the first thing. That is not a legitimate effort to sell something to you."
  Finn was one of several people who testified last Wednesday before the Senate's Special Committee on Aging, which held a he
  
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• Anders kijken helpt CIO voorbij dilemma’s

  27-10-2015 16:20
  Beslissingen aan de bestuurstafel zijn nogal eens complex en stellen betrokkenen menigmaal voor lastige dilemma's. Managers houden niet van dilemmas, omdat het ze voor het blok zet. Wat je ook kiest, de consequenties zijn negatief. Maar is dit wel zo? Op CIODAY 2015 houdt Frank Buytendijk, Research VP &... lees meer
  
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• Can Oracle lead in the cloud? Only if customers follow

  27-10-2015 16:14
  
  If there was any single take-away message from Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd at the company's OpenWorld show this week, it was that Oracle has now fully arrived at the cloud party and is ready to lead. Whether that can happen, however, is entirely up to customers -- and their buy-in is far from guaranteed.Oracle made several key additions to its cloud portfolio this week, including new applications for manufacturers."We now have virtually 100 percent of our portfolio rewritten, rebuilt and modern
  
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• BrandPost: Insights You Weren’t Expecting from Big Data

  27-10-2015 16:05
  
  Many organizations often don’t realize how much value there might be in all of the content in their various information sources. But those organizations that do recognize this potential are generating insights from their own internal big data and advanced analytics techniques. In addition, they are turning those insights into increased revenue, improved knowledge worker productivity, and lower costs.Here are several “aha” moments that could change the way you think about big da
  
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• 5 predictions for the EU-U.S. Safe Harbor showdown

  27-10-2015 15:52
  
  The European Union’s highest authorities on data protection from its 28 member states issued a statement on Oct. 16 stating that unless the National Security Agency modifies its surveillance procedures by the end of January, they may launch a coordinated enforcement campaign against U.S. companies that have privacy protections they deem inadequate. Moreover, they added, any member state has their support to immediately initiate similar enforcement actions on its own accord.
  If the U.S. st
  
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• Cisco buying Lancope for $450M

  27-10-2015 15:41
  
  Cisco this week said it would acquire security vendor Lancope for $452.5 million to bolster its threat visibility portfolio for enterprise networks.
  Lancope specializes in network behavior analytics, threat visibility and security intelligence. Its StealthWatch product is designed to continuously monitor the enterprise network and identify suspicious traffic patterns to detect attacks.
  +MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Cisco plans to embed security everywhere+To read this article in full or to leave a co
  
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• Here's what Samsung's giant 18-inch super tablet looks like

  27-10-2015 15:39
  
  We got our first look at Samsung’s behemoth Galaxy View in September during the Gear S2 smartwatch release. Since then, it’s been the subject of numerous leaks and rumors. The latest happened late Monday when Evan Blass, the driving force behind the once highly active Evleaks, published a presumably official rendering of the device.
  Based on the image, the Galaxy View has a serious curve in the upper back portion of the device and a large Surface-like kickstand in the back. The new
  
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• Can smart stadiums help sports teams compete with TV?

  27-10-2015 15:29
  
  For years, television networks have added ever more features to their sports broadcasts to make watching games on TV a compelling alternative to taking in games at the stadium. These days, things have come full circle — the television experience, whether at home or at the sports bar, now overshadows the in-stadium experience.[ Related: 8 ways analytics are changing pro sports ]In a 1998 ESPN poll, 54 percent of sports fans said they'd rather watch the game at the stadium than at home. By 2
  
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• EU vote for 'neutral' net plan draws sharp criticism

  27-10-2015 15:17
  
  By rejecting amendments as it passed a bill on net neutrality, the European Parliament has all but ensured that in the European Union, the Internet will be neutral in name only, critics say.
  While the effects of the "European Single Market for Electronic Communications" regulation on net neutrality are disputed, it will also mean that, from June 15, 2017, cellular operators can no longer charge a premium on voice or data traffic outside a subscriber's home country. Politicians have labelled the
  
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• Women CIOs say visibility is key to closing gender gap

  27-10-2015 14:39
  
  NEW YORK -- Early in her career, Martha Poulter recalls telling her boss that she was interested in a promising new position that had opened up at her company. But her boss demurred, saying that that he wouldn't consider her because she was never in his office and he had no idea how it is that she did her job. Stunned, Poulter, now the CIO of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, says the exchange taught her that the importance of meeting regularly with managers to gain their trust"He didn't
  
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• Webmasters have only hours to deploy patches, Joomla incident shows

  27-10-2015 14:39
  Four hours -- that's the time Joomla website owners had to apply a patch recently before attackers started to exploit the flaw it fixed. Those who still haven't updated their websites are likely to find them compromised.
  On Thursday, the developers of Joomla released version 3.4.5 of the popular content management system in order to fix an SQL injection vulnerability that allows attackers to gain administrative privileges by hijacking an active administrator session.
  Less than four hours after
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Software vendors -- fear and loathing

  27-10-2015 14:37
  
  Loathing
  Every CIO who has ever dealt with a Fortune 500 software vendor has a story to tell.  Software vendors provide poor support, use confusing license terms to later ambush their clients with software audits, charge for every enhancement … the list goes on and on.  Customer surveys reveal deep dissatisfaction with software vendors.For most customers, this is a way of life.  Indeed, it has produced its own echo system.  As I've noted before, a whole industry has gr
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 5 reasons bad-guy project managers finish last

  27-10-2015 14:12
  
  A crazy number of you liked my blog 5 reasons nice-guy project managers finish first. So I thought it might be interesting to give you my analysis on why bad-guy project managers finish last -- or at least don't often finish first. I realize the “squeaky wheel gets the grease” more times than it should, making that a very real and relevant quote. However, in the long run they do not win out. Here are my thoughts on the matter.The bad-guy project manager
  1. Often offends the client. T
  
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• Iranian hackers get tech support on forums

  27-10-2015 13:00
  
  Iranian hackers are targeting Android systems using AndroRat and DroidJack remote-access Trojans, and are getting support from local-language forums.
  According to research released this morning by Recorded Future, these particular RATs provide the ability to intercept SMS messages, contacts, call logs, browser history, and user credentials on visited websites. The malware can also intercept data from phone features like the microphone or camera.
  These tools are most commonly used in very focuse
  
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• Mozilla will donate $1 million to open-source projects

  27-10-2015 12:46
  
  The Mozilla Foundation, which supports the development of the Firefox browser, announced recently that it would contribute $1 million to various open-source software projects under the auspices of the new Mozilla Open-Source Support program.
  The foundation says that it’s looking to hand out money to as many as 10 projects, in amounts in the range of $10,000 to $250,000. The grant winners will be announced at the Mozilla coincidental work week scheduled for mid-December in Orlando, which i
  
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• EU will fund car, hospital and airport IT security research

  27-10-2015 12:44
  
  Smart cars, airports and hospitals are likely to increasingly become targets for hackers -- and now the European Union's Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) has them in its sights too.The agency has added intelligent transport systems and smart health services to its remit for 2016. It plans to analyse the security risks inherent in their communications networks, and wants governments to take up its recommendations for securing them by 2017, it said Monday.The research will focus
  
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• Matching students with their dream career (before college)

  27-10-2015 12:33
  
  Millennials catch a lot of flak.B stereotypes aside, there is one thing most people can agree on. Today's young people are saddled with student-loan debt and are often underemployed. But what if there was a way for students to make sound decisions before they embark into higher education and their careers to ensure they are on the right path before taking on loans and years of education? That's what CareerBuilder is trying to do with its newly launched free website, Find Your Calling, which aims
  
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• CareerLabs offers deeper dives on potential employers

  27-10-2015 12:11
  
  The most important factors to consider when searching for a job -- work-life balance, culture, a company's financial health -- are also the hardest to gauge from a candidate's perspective. Or at least they used to be.
  CareerLabs, a new job search site that launched last week, uses machine learning and big data analytics to give job seekers an insider's view of their potential employers and helps them avoid making a career mistake."The things that matter the most for candidates are usually the ha
  
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• Are your IT certifications killing your career?

  27-10-2015 11:58
  
  Specialization creates tremendous value in our economy. Adam Smith’s economic theory on the merits of specialization has been proven true over and over again. Yet, can you have too much of a good thing?  That’s an important question for technology professionals and leaders to consider.Key facts about IT specialization
  How rampant is the scope of the IT specialization? Consider these facts:IT specialization by industry. Following the 2007-2009 recession, many IT professionals hav
  
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• Review: Carbon Black and Cylance: The new face of endpoint security

  27-10-2015 11:00
  
  We know by now that traditional anti-virus doesn’t work, or at least doesn’t work well enough to be the sole line of defense against endpoint exploits. And while the traditional endpoint protection vendors have learned some new tricks and offer some solid features, most enterprises need more.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• New endpoint security tools target zero-day attacks

  27-10-2015 11:00
  
  Differing approaches to endpoint securityTraditional anti-virus doesn’t work well enough to be the sole line of defense against endpoint exploits. And while the traditional AV vendors have learned some new tricks and offer some solid features, most enterprises need more. They want an endpoint product that can prevent zero-day exploits and they want to be more proactive. We looked at two relatively new products, Carbon Black (now owned by Bit9) and Cylance Protect. Both are designed to appr
  
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• Developers weigh JSON, security proposals for Java EE 8

  27-10-2015 11:00
  
  Java EE (Enterprise Edition) 8 is not due until 2017, but given the multitude of proposals Oracle is considering for inclusion, the company will need all that time to sort out the revision. For now, HTTP/2, Model-View Controller, and security capabilities will likely make the cut.
  Speaking at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco on Monday, Oracle’s Linda DeMichiel, Java EE spec lead, cited the list of proposals that must be addressed for Java EE 8. “This is definitely a work in p
  
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• 11 secrets you didn't know about your new Surface Book or Surface Pro 4

  27-10-2015 11:00
  
  Here it is: your shiny new Surface Pro 4 or Surface Book, fresh from the Microsoft store, or pulled out of its package.
  There's so much to learn about your new toy. We'll give you a head start, with 11 subtle or well-hidden features you might otherwise miss. Did we overlook anything good? Let us know in the comments. 11. Customize the pressure sensitivityThe new Surface devices have 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity that can be tuned for your style. To do that though, you’ll need
  
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• 10 riskiest cloud services

  27-10-2015 10:52
  
  Risky businessImage by Tobias Van Der ElstThe average employee uses 30 cloud services at work, according to cloud security vendor Skyhigh Networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• IT-beslissers publieke sector slecht bekend met meldplicht datalekken

  27-10-2015 10:14
  De regelgeving die organisaties verplicht datalekken direct te melden op straffe van hoge boetes is niet bekend bij pakweg zes op de tien IT-verantwoordelijken bij overheid en publieke instellingen. Daarop duidt onderzoek in opdracht van IT-beveiligingsbedrijf Sophos. Zes op de tien ondervraagde... lees meer
  
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• Senate to battle Tuesday on controversial CISA cybersecurity bill

  27-10-2015 08:23
  The U.S. Senate is scheduled to consider early Tuesday the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015, a controversial bill that is intended to encourage businesses to share information about cyberthreats with the government by providing them immunity from customer lawsuits.The CISA bill has been criticized by civil rights groups and some companies in the technology industry, which claim the proposed legislation, dubbed a surveillance bill in disguise, provides loopholes for government intell
  
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• OpenStack tool helps new users find relevant cloud projects

  27-10-2015 05:46
  
  OpenStack Foundation, the backer of an open-source project for software to build cloud services, has launched Project Navigator, an online tool to make it easier for new users to choose from the over 25 cloud-related services or projects offered under its aegis.The tool provides data to new users to help them differentiate between the six core services most commonly deployed across every OpenStack cloud, such as Nova, Neutron, Cinder and Swift, and optional services that they may want to use dep
  
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• 5 interview questions for big data engineers… and how to answer them

  27-10-2015 02:23
  
  Big data engineers work to understand business objectives and translate those objectives into data processing workflows. These professionals are typically responsible for gathering and processing raw data, evaluating new data sources for acquisition and integration, and designing and implementing relational databases for storage and processing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Power-sipping San Francisco network could have IoT devices buzzing

  27-10-2015 02:17
  
  A wireless network planned for San Francisco could once again make the local library the best place to go for information.The data collected there won’t be much fun to read, but it may help consumers, businesses and local agencies take advantage of connected objects. The city agreed to install antennas at its libraries as part of a pilot project by French vendor SigFox to build a network for the Internet of Things. Each antenna will cover a broad swath of the city, and it could allow San F
  
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• From start to finish, inside a PayPal Phishing scam

  27-10-2015 02:16
  
  One of the world's most targeted brands...Image by PayPalPayPal is one of the most commonly targeted brands for Phishing, nearly equal to banks when it comes to potential financial gain for criminals.Today, we're revisiting the concept of how to spot a Phishing email by focusing on a recent Phishing campaign that's targeting PayPal customers. We'll start by pointing out visual cues that will help you avoid becoming a victim, but we'll also go thorough the scam completely so you can see what it l
  
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• World View a step closer to balloon space flight

  27-10-2015 02:13
  
  World View says a successful test flight over the weekend puts it a step closer to commercial balloon flights high enough to see the curvature of the earth and the black of space.
  On Saturday, the company launched from Page, Arizona, a working 1/10th scale model of its flight capsule under a huge balloon that traveled to 100,475 feet (30,624 meters), it said Monday. Once there, a system detached the capsule from the balloon to begin a controlled descent to a landing site using a proprietary par
  
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