IT Executive news

• IDG Contributor Network: 6 more must-have open source apps for Windows, Mac, and Linux

  29-02-2016 22:34
  
  More great open source apps for a cross-platform lifeImage by Yutaka Tsutano/FlickrAs I wrote back in October, 2015, I, like many of you, run a heterogeneous environment, picking the appropriate operating system or platform for the job. To have some level of consistency in my cross-platform workflow I choose applications that I can run on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. And it’s icing on the cake if these applications are open source.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Connected Health and IoT in healthcare delivery: Are we ready?

  29-02-2016 21:43
  
  The HIMSS 2016 juggernaut gets underway this week in Las Vegas. The event is a barometer, among other things, of trends and issues defining technology in healthcare delivery. This year, one of the exhibition themes is Connected Health.So why the focus on connected health this year, and why is it important?To understand this, we need to look at the convergence of multiple socio-economic forces as well as industry trends in healthcare.Let’s start by looking at the definition of Connected Hea
  
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• Smart city tech shows complex connections between data and sensors (+video)

  29-02-2016 19:57
  
  BARCELONA -- At Mobile World Congress, hundreds of companies showed off new smart city technologies, some that are just in the start-up phase while others are being implemented in select cities.
  One concept further along in deployment is a smart parking meter made by Paris-based Parkeon that's in use in 12,000 locations in New York City alone, and even at beaches in Australia.Parkeon showed a deluxe meter that takes credit cards and includes a display that can offer news. In Sydney, for instanc
  
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• IBM to buy Resilient Systems, bringing security guru Bruce Schneier on board

  29-02-2016 19:34
  IBM will acquire Resilient Systems, it announced Monday, and along with the company, it will gain a big name in the security world: Bruce Schneier.Resilient makes an incident-response platform that automates and orchestrates the processes for dealing with cyber incidents such as breaches and lost devices, and enabling companies to respond more quickly. The acquisition will give IBM Security the industry's first integrated end-to-end platform combining analytics, forensics, vulnerability manageme
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Modeling complexity: Iterative risks and opportunities

  29-02-2016 19:21
  
  Single points of failure rarely happen in real life – they’re literally the stuff of movies.Take the original Death Star, for example: This planet-destroying weapon of terrifying proportion and power, this ultimate expression of sophisticated evil and utter darkness—had a thermal exhaust port through which Luke Skywalker fired a couple missiles. Boom—problem solved. (At least until Death Star II came along.)It’s worth noting that this cinematic single point of failu
  
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• 10 momentous moments from 25 years of RSA

  29-02-2016 19:02
  
  RSA wants youAs much as it stands for a cryptosystem and a security vendor, RSA is synonymous for the world’s largest digital security conference, which is being held for the 25th year this week in San Francisco. Born in 2001 to battle government involvement on a public authentication standard, over the years it has been the forum where major security and privacy issues - and some lesser - ones have been aired. Here’s a look at 10 of these moments.To read this article in full or to l
  
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• Getting analytical about analytics

  29-02-2016 19:00
  
  Our industry has to get much more analytical in how we make decisions about the analytic tool sets and techniques we deploy.  I recently pinged 2,500 senior decision-makers to ask how their organizations made decisions about analytics investments. I was surprised that for more than 60% of the respondents, decision-making around analytic strategy, architecture, tool sets, base platforms, techniques and capability development is basically ad hoc — they’ve been winging it. I needn&
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 3 and a half fundamentals of IT investment that every SME needs to know

  29-02-2016 18:47
  
  Technology is the saviour of business. It offers real-time information about your suppliers, delivers a seamless experience for your employees and customers and is the catalyst for process efficiency throughout your organization.Wait?! What?If this sounds just like you and your business, you’re one of the select few that has managed to invest properly in technology. Unfortunately, for most, this is not the case. For many business owners I have worked with, the complexity of IT and the myri
  
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• Laid-off IT workers speak out at Trump rally

  29-02-2016 18:43
  
  Two former Disney IT workers spoke at a Donald Trump campaign rally on Sunday, telling about the shock of having to train their foreign replacements.
  It's hard to recall any presidential campaign, in any year, that has given IT workers this type of visibility. But Trump, the businessman nowseeking the Republican nomination, has made H-1B reforms a part of his platform.
  Speaking at the large rally in Madison, Ala. was Dena Moore, a former Disney IT worker who trained her foreign replacement. Aro
  
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• Sprint brings back two-year contracts in effort to stand apart from other carriers

  29-02-2016 18:21
  
  The two-year contract has returned to Sprint.
  Even though the carrier killed them off about a month ago, you can now browse for a subsidized phone on the Sprint website, which will land you a Galaxy S6 or other phone at a much lower price.Sprint
  A cheaper phone can be yours as long as you’re willing to lock yourself to Sprint for two years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Apple's top counsel to tell Congress, 'Encryption is a necessary thing'

  29-02-2016 18:15
  
  Apple’s refusal to help the FBI brute-force the iPhone 5c passcode of the San Bernardino shooter will most likely play out in the courts—the first hearing is scheduled for March 22 in Riverside, California. But Congress has a role to play too.
  On Tuesday, Apple Senior Vice President and General Counsel Bruce Sewell will testify before the House Judiciary Committee, stressing that while Apple does respect and assist law enforcement, what the FBI wants this time simply goes too far.
  O
  
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• CTB-Locker ransomware hits over 100 websites

  29-02-2016 17:55
  A new malicious program that encrypts files on Web servers has affected at least 100 websites over the past few weeks, signaling a new trend in ransomware development.The program, which is written in PHP, is called CTB-Locker, a name also used by one of the most widespread ransomware programs for Windows computers. It's not clear though if there's a relationship between this new Web-based ransomware and the Windows version.Once installed on a Web server, the program replaces the site's index.php
  
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• Five things you need to know about the EU-US Privacy Shield agreement

  29-02-2016 16:58
  The Privacy Shield agreement is intended to guarantee the personal information of European Union citizens the same privacy protection when processed in the U.S. as it would receive at home. Where these guarantees are not available, the information must stay in the EU.Privacy Shield replaces the earlier Safe Harbor agreement, which was torn up by the Court of Justice of the European Union last October because it did not provide adequate protection.Like its predecessor, Privacy Shield require U.S.
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Why a stylus beats the Apple Pencil for navigating iOS

  29-02-2016 16:03
  
  The Apple Pencil has been all over the news lately after Apple yanked the ability to use it to navigate iOS from a recent beta of iOS 9.3. Thankfully, the company has decided to add the Apple Pencil navigation features back into an upcoming beta. So you will be able to use the Apple Pencil to navigate around in iOS 9.3 when it is finally released.But should you use the Apple Pencil for navigation in iOS? Or does it make more sense to use a regular stylus?This question occurred to me recently, so
  
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• Whirlpool CIO tackles ERP overhaul and IoT-powered appliances

  29-02-2016 15:54
  
  If you love a good tale of multi-tasking on major projects, Whirlpool CIO Michael Heim has a great story for you. He is overhauling an aging ERP system to improve operational efficiencies across the appliance maker’s global regions and embracing the Internet of Things to improve the quality and longevity of the company's appliances.If that sounds familiar to your global CIOs out there it’s because such diverse projects – sometimes conducted under the banner of bimodal IT &ndash
  
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• WhatsApp gives up on BlackBerry, Nokia, and more

  29-02-2016 15:48
  
  Facebook-owned WhatsApp recently turned seven years old. What better way to celebrate the milestone than cutting ties with the past? This past weekend, the popular messaging app said it will cease support for seven aging and little-used operating systems by the end of 2016. No, smart alecks, Windows 10 Mobile isn't on the list—but Blackberry 10 is.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Apple spells out what it would take to comply with government's iPhone order

  29-02-2016 15:30
  
  Apple last week argued that assisting the FBI in the agency's attempt to access an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino killers would be an undue burden that would require a staff of between six and ten people who would have to dedicate two to four weeks of their time to the task.
  In a motion filed Friday with a California court, Apple ticked off several constitutional arguments against helping the FBI break into the iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who along with his wife, Tafsheen Malik
  
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• Internet2 at 20: Alive and kicking

  29-02-2016 15:00
  
  Nearly 20 years after its launch, Internet2 is quietly humming along on university campuses across the country, doing its R&D work and connecting researchers who might otherwise not be able to share information so readily.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Does Linux need a data loss prevention solution?

  29-02-2016 15:00
  
  CoSoSys, a firm that offers data loss prevention (DLP) and mobile device management (MDM) solutions, today announced a private beta release of Endpoint Protector DLP for Linux.
  Yes, Linux is secure by design, but that doesn't mean there won't be software bugs (Linus Torvalds has said as much, noting that bugs are part of the software development process). And, yes, there have been some critical security threats that surfaced in the last few years such as GHOST, ShellShock, Heartbleed, and the G
  
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• Pica8 scales OpenFlow 1,000x

  29-02-2016 14:55
  
  White box switching company Pica8 this week enhanced its operating system software to overcome limitations in OpenFlow switching.
  Pica8 is adding Table Type Patterns (TTP) to PicOS so it can scale to 2 million flows with Cavium’s XPliant switch ASIC, and to 256,000 flows with Broadcom’s StrataXGS Tomahawk switch ASIC. This will enable larger data center build-outs, Pica8 says, because typical TCAM flow capacity in the top-of-rack installed base today is between 1,000 and 2,000 flows
  
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• How one CTO built a culture of trust and engagement

  29-02-2016 14:36
  
  When Joe McBreen took over as CTO of St. Vrain Valley School District(SVVSD) just outside of Denverin July 2009, he was on top of the world and thought he'd be living a dream. But it almost immediately became apparent that he'd stepped into a nightmare. In a presentation at ITSM consultancy, education and training provider Pink Elephant's Pink16 conference earlier this month in Las Vegas, McBreen began by sharing an anecdote about one of his most memorable on-the-job experiences.
  Thinkstock Shor
  
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• Report: Compliance biggest driver of encryption

  29-02-2016 14:18
  
  The biggest driver of encryption technology is the need to comply with privacy or data security regulations, according to a new report.
  In a survey of more than 5,000 business and IT managers, 61 percent told the Ponemon Institute that compliance was the main driver, followed by 50 percent who said that protecting enterprise intellectual property was the main driver, and 49 percent who pointed to protecting information against specific, identified threats and 47 percent who said that protecting
  
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• 8 things keeping security professionals up at night

  29-02-2016 14:07
  
  8 things keeping security professionals up at nightImage by ThinkstockWhether it's due to a high-profile security breach, the tenuous nature of consumer data or just trying to get ahead of a data-disaster, security is on everyone's mind. Security professionals are tasked with securing data, preventing data breaches and dealing with security flaws in business systems. A recent study commissioned by Trustwave, an information security company that provides threat vulnerability and compliance manage
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How writing better requirement details drives software purchase success

  29-02-2016 13:44
  
  When developing requirements for a major software purchase, two questions that come up are 1) How much detail should the requirements list contain? and 2) How much detail should there be in each requirement description? Where a previous article examined the different parts of a requirement, this article focuses on how to write better requirement descriptions. For an idea of how detailed requirement descriptions themselves should be, we must first examine why description detail is important
  
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• EU adds detail to Privacy Shield agreement, prepares to give it force of law

  29-02-2016 13:35
  
  The European Commission has detailed the steps businesses must take to comply with the Privacy Shield data protection agreement reached with U.S. authorities earlier this month, and published a draft of the order that will give it force of law.Privacy Shield is the replacement for the Safe Harbor agreement torn up by the Court of Justice of the European Union last October.Like its predecessor, is intended to ensure that the personal data of EU citizens benefits from the same privacy protections
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Discovering top-line growth through innovation

  29-02-2016 13:34
  
  Innovation drives top-line growth leading to increased revenue and increased gross sales.Two simple goals continue to perplex companies: 1. growing revenues, or generating top-line growth and 2. increasing net income, or producing bottom-line growth. Innovation requires laser focus on top-line growth and here’s why.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 4 ways to achieve project status reporting success

  29-02-2016 13:27
  
  At the heart of project communication is the project status report. It may not be the spoken word, but it draws a lot of attention on the project every week and likely helps the project manager run a successful weekly project status call with the customer. At least it does if it's done right. It should drive that meeting. So make it complete, make it look good, make it fit everyone's needs, and focus on these four concepts to put together the best status report possible for your project.1. Creat
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Why IT people should also be business people

  29-02-2016 13:00
  
  Private Joker: I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir.Colonel: The what?Private Joker: The duality of man. The Jungian thing, sir.-          Full Metal JacketThe current discussions around "the Business" (with a capital "B") and IT, although well-intentioned, are counter-productive. This distinction drives a wedge between people whose daily responsibilities do not include delivering IT-focused capabilities and those wh
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: The 4 slides you need

  29-02-2016 12:54
  
  Presenters sweat over how many slides they should include in their deck. Nearly everyone compulsively creates more slides than they are going to need and then has to scramble to reduce the number. Rationalizations for this excess of creativity are many, including:I want to be sure that I have enough material to fill the allotted time.
  I want to make sure that I do not leave anything out that could be important to the audience.
  I want to “get everything out on the table” (and cover my
  
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• How to avoid common travel and vacation scams

  29-02-2016 12:50
  
  As usual, winter's been bleak. You're ready to go ... anywhere else. Somewhere warmer, brighter, more fun. And someone else is there waiting and ready to steal your information — and your money — in the process. Travel scams are ripe and ripening as the days grow longer, in some high and very low tech ways. "The really staggering message that came through in 2015 was that it was the year attackers spent a lot less time and energy on really sophisticated technology intr
  
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• Video profiles: Tech leaders on and off the clock

  29-02-2016 12:30
  
  In this occasional series of video portraits, Computerworld explores how top tech leaders offset the demands of the office with a rich and varied personal life. Enjoy this profile of Accuride CIO Paul Wright on his farm, and check back soon as we add footage with other top tech leaders.Paul Wright, AccuridePaul Wright, a 2016 Premier 100 Technology Leader, has always liked to make things. His father and grandfather both had careers in manufacturing, and back in his college years, Wright had an
  
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• Hard-core data preservation: The best media and methods for archiving your data

  29-02-2016 12:30
  A lot is written about the importance of backing up data, but the media and methodologies proposed aren’t generally suitable for archiving. Securing your data for posterity, i.e., archiving, requires a different approach, where shelved media life and future file compatibility trump the speed and convenience that make backup palatable to the average user.
  We’ll discuss methodology later, but here’s the low-down on the media types available for backup and archival purposes.
  
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• The 13 developer skills you need to master now

  29-02-2016 12:00
  
  Heavy weighs the crown of the developer king.
  Yes, as software eats the world, demand for skilled developers remains high. But software’s pervasiveness -- from the server to the cloud to the coming onslaught of wearable and IoT devices -- means far greater responsibilities for software engineers and the need to constantly expand your skills.[ Find out how to handle the real-world problems faced by developers, with InfoWorld's professional programmer's business survival guide. | Keep up wi
  
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• Skyport eases the pain of deploying and securing remote servers

  29-02-2016 12:00
  
  Skyport does one thing, and it does it well. Skyport offers SkySecure Server, a remotely deployable platform for Windows and/or Linux virtual machines in a fortress-like environment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• How a Barbie doll prepares your child for the future

  29-02-2016 12:00
  
  The most memorable scene in the 1986 movie, Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home involved a time-traveling Scotty trying to use a computer from the 1980s. He walks up to a Macintosh Plus and says: "Computer!" When the computer doesn't respond, it occurs to Dr. McCoy that, because this is a primitive computer from the past, perhaps it needs a close-up microphone. So he hands the mouse to Scotty, who tries his voice command into the mouse.
  The scene is as prescient as it is funny.
  What Star Trek always g
  
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• Have you aggravated a telemarketer today?

  29-02-2016 12:00
  
  Would you rather have a root canal or talk to yet another irritating telemarketer? Do you think that Rachel from Cardholder Services should be on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List? Has a telemarketer ever caused you to say *#$@! in front of your children?Auto-dialers, robo-callers and telemarketers are becoming more annoying and aggressive in their efforts to invade your privacy and separate you from your money. In fiscal year 2015, this national problem resulted in more than 175,000 complaint
  
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• Facebook lays out ambitious React.js JavaScript dev plans

  29-02-2016 12:00
  
  React.js, Facebook's JavaScript library for building user interfaces, is in line for improvements in performance, gesture capabilities, and developer experience.
  All these improvements, however, remain in the conceptual stage, with Facebook seeking help from the developer community to implement them.[ Need a JavaScript tool for your dev shop? InfoWorld looks at 17 JavaScript editors and IDEs ready for adoption. | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorld's Strategic Developer blog a
  
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• Faster Raspberry Pi 3 available for $35 with 64-bit processor, Wi-Fi

  29-02-2016 08:00
  
  Raspberry Pi has an in-storetreat on its fourth anniversary.
  It is now shipping the Raspberry Pi 3 computer, which at the same US$35 price as its Pi 2 predecessor packs a more powerful 64-bit CPU, and for the first time, has built-in wireless capabilities.
  The credit-card sized  Pi 3 is up to 60 percent faster than its predecessor, which has shipped in the millions.
  It is the first Pi that can be called a true PC replacement, said Eben Upton, CEO of Raspberry Pi, in a phone interview
  
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