IT Executive news

• BrandPost: Preparing for the workplace of the future

  04-12-2015 22:33
  
  Millennials at the gates? Baby boomers in the drivers’ seats? The modern workplace is evolving rapidly, and technology needs to evolve along with it. As organizations transition to a dramatically different vision of tomorrow’s workplace, the CIO will play a critical role in executing on the vision. Embracing an increasingly virtual workplace requires more than a new technological infrastructure that is flexible enough to change when employee requirements change as well
  
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• If you return a tech gift this Christmas, make sure you erase all your data first

  04-12-2015 21:19
  
  The first tip that something wasn’t quite right about the open-box tablet I had purchased from Fry’s Electronics was that fact that Marvel Contest of Champions appeared on the home screen.
  I had sought out the most run-down, crappiest tablet I could buy for our buying guide on productivity tablets, as an example of what not to buy during the holiday season. The Visual Land tablet I found for about $70 was two years old, with visible pixels and a loose power connector. I powered
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How to test for a best in class agile data warehouse environment

  04-12-2015 21:16
  
  This first in this series of articles describe foundational steps that enable agile data warehouse development – something that has been a challenge in enterprise data management for years.  My prior articles published thus far describe how to develop a business conceptual model as a starting point, building a “grass roots” (at a minimum) data governance capability, and developing a high level data flow architecture.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, pleas
  
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• Microsoft slates Build dev conference for March 30-April 1

  04-12-2015 20:19
  
  Microsoft said today it will host next year's Build conference for developers March 30 through April 1.
  Build 2016 will again take place in San Francisco's Moscone Center, the venue Microsoft has used the last three years, and the same hall where both Apple and Google also run their annual developer gatherings.
  Registration for Build 2016 has not yet been set. But if the Redmond, Wash. company uses the same timeline as it did this year, it will kick off sign-up in late December on the conferenc
  
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• The FTC's next chief technologist is on a quest for better passwords

  04-12-2015 20:12
  
  Privacy issues will likely stay at the forefront of the FTC's focus next year thanks to the commission's appointment of Lorrie Cranor as its new chief technologist.Cranor, who is currently a professor of computer science and engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, directs the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory. She will succeed Ashkan Soltani, the privacy expert who assumed the role in November 2014, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced on Thursday.Cranor wi
  
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• Progressive crowdsources its way to business, IT innovation

  04-12-2015 20:05
  
  What started as an informal initiative to allow Progressive employees to propose ideas for new insurance tools and services has blossomed into a full-fledged program that spurs innovation. The crowdsourcing process, called Edison, now includes a Shark Tank-like voting process, hackathons and an expo in which employees showcase their creations.Erin Baginski, Progressive IT director.Progressive employees “came together and started using their skill sets to focus on making these ideas better,
  
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• Lenders may eye smartphone use before giving you a loan

  04-12-2015 20:01
  
  Smartphone usage is likely to be tracked someday soon in the U.S. to determine whether you qualify for a loan or what interest rate lenders should charge.
  Already, some lenders in a few African nations are using smartphone apps to monitor how often a user texts or charges a phone battery, then to correlate such information with the user's ability to repay a loan. The apps, in some cases built by U.S. startups, are being downloaded by users who opt-in to have their usage habits monitored.
  It's o
  
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• Five things you should know about drone regulations

  04-12-2015 20:00
  
  Drones are one of the hottest things in tech right now, but as well as being fun to play with they can be a menace to airports and a hindrance to firefighters. The rules around drone use are still being formed, but here's what you need to know so far.1. Restrictions on flying
  Every drone pilot must adhere to a few basic rules. Most important is the requirement to keep the drone below 400 feet, otherwise it can stray into controlled airspace and collide with a plane or helicopter. Don't fly a dro
  
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• Russian spy group adopts new tools to hack defense contractor networks

  04-12-2015 19:52
  A Russian cyberespionage group known as Pawn Storm has adopted new tools in an ongoing attack campaign against defense contractors with the goal of defeating network isolation policies.Pawn Storm, also known as Sofacy, after its primary malware tool, has been active since at least 2007 and has targeted governmental, security and military organizations from NATO member countries, as well as media organizations, Ukrainian political activists and Kremlin critics.Since August, the group ha
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Running IT as a business: As true today as it ever was

  04-12-2015 19:00
  
  “You can choose not to learn how to run IT as a business, but I guarantee you that your replacement will know how." –Ramon Baez, CIO, HPOver the past five years there’s been a significant shift in the number of IT executives who not only run IT as a business, but are doing it really well. The results speak for themselves: Hundreds of millions in savings, adoption of disruptive platforms, agility in acquiring and merging businesses, large-scale shifts in capital from run to gro
  
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• Why iOS and Android will soon become obsolete

  04-12-2015 18:41
  
  Android faced many issues when it came to market -- ranging from uneven quality to security to who actually owned the underlying technology. Systematically over time many of these individual issues have been corrected, but another more interesting problem has emerged: the question of Android’s future.For the most part Android, like iOS, was conceived to be a mobile operating system for small devices. However, as we move to capabilities that allow us to take a mobile device and scale it up
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Projects that win are worth the wax: Make your IT project exciting

  04-12-2015 18:39
  
  Long lonely hours, hard work, endless challenges.
  Sometimes IT project success means burning the candles at both ends but is your project worth the candle wax?
  Dull projects are doomed! When your project excites you it stands a greater chance of success.
  Think back to when you were a kid. You asked for a biscuit and your mum not only refused, but she moved the biscuit barrel to the top shelf out of your reach. Then she left the kitchen.
  It was the work of an instant. You grabbed a chair from th
  
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• Intel Skylake CPUs reportedly bending under pressure from third-party coolers

  04-12-2015 18:02
  Bendgate is back. But this time it’s not Apple that’s under the gun for flexible iPhones, but Intel for Skylake CPUs bending under pressure.
  It appears that select third-party CPU air cooling systems are putting too much pressure on Skylake processors and sockets resulting in damage, as first reported by German-language site PC Games Hardware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: The 5 A’s on the program manager’s report card

  04-12-2015 17:44
  
  "Greatness begins beyond your comfort zone." –Robin SharmaOne of my kids came home with a report card the other day. I saw it laying on the stairs when I was on my way to go to bed. I picked it up and stared at it for awhile. The result was great and made me feel proud. Once I was beyond the point of happiness, I looked at the scoring mechanism and concluded that through the years it has not changed much. The other thought that came to mind was how would a report card of a program manager
  
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• EU just two votes away from scooping up air passenger data

  04-12-2015 17:17
  
  A system for tracking European air passengers is just two votes -- and two years -- away from implementation, after national governments agreed Friday to a text proposed by the European Parliament.But even if the text is ratified promptly, EU rules mean it won't take effect for another two years.There's no plan to create a single, central database about passengers flying into and out of the European Union. Rather, each member state will set up its own passenger information unit to gather data fr
  
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• Why wireless will escape the FCC’s redefinition

  04-12-2015 17:09
  
  Today (Dec. 4), the Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington will hear oral arguments challenging the Federal Communications Commission’s new Internet regulations. As you’ll recall, the FCC in February reversed long-standing policy and said it would govern the Internet using the Communications Act’s 80-year old telephone rules, known as Title II. Especially surprising was the FCC’s choice to subject mobile broadband to the old rules. Until the final rule was revealed,
  
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• Black Friday to Cyber Monday: Mobile commerce up, fraud (mostly) down

  04-12-2015 16:16
  
  If you indulged in online shopping over the Thanksgiving weekend this year, you were far from alone. "Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday [drove] a total of $11 billion in online sales, a 15 percent increase year-over-year (YoY) and 30 percent of all online sales in November ($39.5 billion)," according to Adobe's Digital Index, which analyzed aggregated and anonymous data of more than 125 million visits to 4,500 retail websites to feed its predictive model.To read this article in full or to l
  
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• Widespread exploit kit, password stealer and ransomware program mixed into dangerous cocktail

  04-12-2015 15:54
  An ongoing attack campaign combines a very effective password stealer, the most widespread exploit kit, called Angler, and the latest version of the infamous CryptoWall file-encrypting ransomware program.The attackers first use the Pony computer Trojan to pilfer passwords from compromised computers, including FTP and SSH credentials that webmasters use to administer websites, according to researchers from Heimdal Security.The stolen credentials are then used to inject malicious code into legitim
  
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• Putting Apple Pencil to work with Evernote, OneNote and Notability

  04-12-2015 15:14
  
  My Apple Pencil ($99) finally arrived on Thursday, three weeks after I ordered it on Nov. 11. I went right to work using the stylus, drawing annotations on documents, particularly PDFs and Web pages.More specifically, I wanted to draw circles around, and arrows pointing, toward text and images within documents, to call them out for myself, colleagues and friends. In other words: I wanted to use old-school markup in a high-tech way.Testing Apple Pencil on Evernote, OneNote, LiquidText, and N
  
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• The best holiday gift cards and digital subscriptions for techies

  04-12-2015 15:09
  
  Geeky gifts for the technology-obsessedImage by ThinkstockAn unwanted gift says a lot. It can imply that you, the gift giver, (a) don't really know the recipient, or (b) you're too busy to shop for a thoughtful gift. It's a lose-lose situation.So how about some tech-related gifts for the geeks on your list that let them choose what they want, when and how? The following gift subscriptions and cards (listed in alphabetical order), provide quick and easy access to apps, movies, music, TV episodes,
  
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• Big data and tater tots: How Sonic chooses where to open restaurants

  04-12-2015 14:21
  
  Fast-food chain Sonic is primarily a southern institution, but it’s not planning to stay geographically limited for long. Sonic’s working to bring more of its cheeseburgers, tater tots and roller-skating carhops to the Northeast and the West, identifying places to open new restaurants and studying predicted sales trends.
  Sonic GIS  analyst Bradford Zygmontowicz
  Chain restaurants have been doing this kind of work for decades – the margins in the industry can be fine, so bi
  
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• 'Big Four' wireless carriers get poor scores in Consumer Reports ranking

  04-12-2015 14:00
  
  Can you guess which U.S. wireless provider makes its customers the happiest? Hint: It's not AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint or T-Mobile. It's a relatively small, independent company you may have never hear of, called Consumer Cellular, at least according to a recent consumer satisfaction survey.
  Consumer Cellular sits at the top of a ranking based on a survey of nearly 90,000 Consumer Reports subscribers. Not only did Consumer Cellular top the charts, all of the companies that scored th
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: iOS 9: Clear cookies, browsing history and data from Safari's cache

  04-12-2015 13:00
  
  Safari has proven to be a terrific browser in iOS 9, and some folks that were using other browsers such as Chrome have switched back to Safari. But even the best browser can build up a lot of data and cookies in its cache, and you'd be surprised at how much storage space that can take up on your iPad or iPhone.In this how-to I'll show you how to get rid of all of the cookies and data in Safari's cache, and I'll also show you how to clear your browsing history in Safari.How to clear cookies, data
  
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• Cyber-security-beleid frustreert meer dan kwart Nederlandse managers

  04-12-2015 12:24
  Vergeleken met andere West-Europese landen zijn Nederlandse managers en bestuurders vaker gefrustreerd over het beleid ten aanzien van cyber-security in hun organisatie. En meer dan een kwart stelt de organisatie bloot aan risico’s, deels uit onwetendheid, deels bewust. Daarop duidt onderzoek door Palo Alto... lees meer
  
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• Can you keep Linux-based ransomware from attacking your servers?

  04-12-2015 12:19
  
  According to SophosLabs, Linux/Ransm-C ransomware is one example of the new Linux-based ransomware attacks, which in this case is built into a small command line program and designed to help crooks extort money through Linux servers.
  “These Linux ransomware attacks are moving away from targeting end users and gravitating toward targeting Linux servers, web servers specifically, with a piece of software that encrypts data and is similar to what we’ve seen in previous years such as Cr
  
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• Bernhard van Oranje over CIO of the Year Arnoud Klerkx

  04-12-2015 09:53
  Bernhard van Oranje, voor de tiende maal juryvoorzitter van de eveneens tiende CIO of the Year Award, spreekt op CIODAY2015 met Vincent Everts over de manier waarop winnaar Arnoud Klerkx, slechts anderhalf jaar werkzaam bij Sanoma Learning, de educatieve uitgeeftak daar heeft gekanteld door IT onderdeel te maken... lees meer
  
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• Samsung agrees to pay Apple $548M in damages with conditions

  04-12-2015 07:37
  Samsung Electronics has agreed to pay Apple US$548 million in damages in a patent infringement lawsuit in California, which will be the first shot at compensation Apple will get in the dispute that has dragged on for several years with many twists and turns.The move by Samsung follows the rejection last month by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit of a full-bench hearing to review the damages award in the patent dispute in the light of new information about an Apple patent.The Sout
  
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• Net neutrality could be on the line in Washington court battle

  04-12-2015 03:39
  The FCC's net neutrality rules go on trial Friday as oral arguments begin in 10 lawsuits that could dramatically change the way Internet service providers are regulated.In February, the Federal Communications Commission voted to ban service providers from giving some content preferential treatment. It also reclassified broadband as a communications service, similar to old-fashioned telecommunications except with exemptions from pricing and other regulations.The rules went into effect in April bu
  
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• Millions of smart TVs, phones and routers at risk from old vulnerability

  04-12-2015 02:47
  
  A three-year-old vulnerability in a software component used in millions of smart TVs, routers and phones still hasn't been patched by many vendors, thus posing a risk, according to Trend Micro.Although a patch was issued for the component in December 2012, Trend Micro found 547 apps that use an older unpatched version of it, wrote Veo Zhang, a mobile threats analyst."These are very popular apps that put millions of users in danger; aside from mobile devices, routers, and smart TVs are all a
  
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• Uber tests color-coded ride pickups to avoid getting into the wrong car

  04-12-2015 02:46
  
  Uber is trying to help you avoid that awkward moment when you into the wrong car.
  The ride-sharing company will start testing a color-coded “Spot” lighting system that promises to “light your way to a smoother pickup.” As part of Spot, Uber cars in Seattle will start flashing a color LED light near the windshield that will match the color on your smartphone.
  This is how it works: After you hail a ride on the Uber app, you will be asked to choose one of the six colors. Wh
  
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• IDC sees 10% decline in Windows Phone, notes slackening smartphone growth

  04-12-2015 02:38
  
  Growth in the global smartphone market is slowing, and will increase by just 9.8% this year -- the first time growth has slowed into the single digits, IDC said Thursday.
  Earlier IDC forecasts for 2015 had been higher, but a Windows Phone decline of 10.2% for the year will help drag down expected growth. That decline comes despite the launch of Windows 10 this past summer.
  The forecast of 9.8% growth rate is still healthy, but represents a big change from recent years; smartphone shipments grew
  
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• Yahoo launches new Messenger app in face of possible big changes

  04-12-2015 02:37
  
  As Yahoo tries to breathe new life into its Messenger service, some industry analysts say it may be too little too late for a company mired in rumors of a possible sale and executive turmoil.
  "I always say that companies should be throwing ideas against the wall to see what sticks, and then they should build on that," said Jeff Kagan, an independent industry analyst. "But Yahoo hasn't had an idea stick to the wall in more years than I can remember. I know they're trying everything they can to s
  
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• Steve Ballmer thinks the future of Windows Phone is Android—and he may be right

  04-12-2015 02:36
  Windows 10 Mobile has barely launched, and Microsoft's former chief executive is already burying it—though in doing so, he may be pointing toward a better way forward for the company.
  At the Microsoft shareholder conference this week, Bloomberg reporter Dina Bass was in the right place at the right time: She picked up former chief executive—and still shareholder—Steve Ballmer criticizing chief executive Satya Nadella and other Microsoft management. One of Microsoft’s fau
  
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• Google announces massive clean energy purchase

  04-12-2015 02:36
  
  Google today announced it will purchase 842 megawatts (MW) of clean energy, nearly a doubling of the power it's purchased to date and taking the company to 2 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy.
  These additional 842MW of power will come from a range of locations across three countries and a number of clean energy technologies, from a wind farm in Sweden to a solar power plant in Chile.Google
  Put in context, 1 megawatt can power roughly 200 homes, so Google's latest purchase could power about 168,000
  
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• When your car has autopilot, will you be ready to take over?

  04-12-2015 02:35
  
  When Tesla Motors enabled the "autopilot" feature on its cars in October, it didn't take long for video to appear of drivers trying crazy things -- none more so than jumping into the passenger seat to leave the car totally in control.
  The stunts are stupid but they highlight a concern that some already have with the growing use of autonomous technologies in cars: If a vehicle is driving itself, will the driver still pay attention to the road?
  The advice from Tesla is clear: "Remain engaged
  
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• Microsoft, law enforcement disrupt Dorkbot botnet

  04-12-2015 01:47
  
  Microsoft said Thursday it aided law enforcement agencies in several regions to disrupt a four-year-old botnet called Dorkbot, which has infected one million computers worldwide.The Dorkbot malware aims to steal login credentials from services such as Gmail, Facebook, PayPal, Steam, eBay, Twitter and Netflix.It was first spotted around April 2011. Users typically get infected by browsing to websites that automatically exploit vulnerable software using exploit kits and through spam. It also has a
  
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• Facebook expands live video streaming to take on Periscope and Meerkat

  04-12-2015 00:45
  
  And we’re live! 
  After giving celebrities the option to broadcast live video to their followers, Facebook is now rolling out this “Live” streaming feature to iOS users in the U.S. The Live feature allows you to record and share video in real time using the Facebook app. After Live is enabled, you will see a new “live video” option when you tap to create a Status Update.
  Once you tap to “Go Live,” you will see the number of viewers tuning in to your
  
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• Free digital certificate project opens doors for public beta

  04-12-2015 00:11
  Let's Encrypt, the project offering free digital certificates for websites, is now issuing them more broadly with the launch of a public beta on Thursday.The beta label will eventually be dropped as the software they've developed is refined, wrote Josh Aas, executive director of the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), which runs Let's Encrypt."Automation is a cornerstone of our strategy, and we need to make sure that the client works smoothly and reliably on a wide range of platfo
  
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