IT Executive news

• New DJI drone offers obstacle avoidance, reduces learning curve

  01-03-2016 23:11
  
  DJI and competitors like Yuneec and 3DR have taken aerial photography to new levels over the past two years with prosumer drones. In fact, if you followed CES 2016 coverage, you saw drones in all shapes, configurations and sizes. DJI has been leading the pack of drone manufacturers, releasing the Phantom 3 last year to much fanfare. Looking to take its commanding lead to next heights, DJI today announced the Phantom 4.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• OpenSSL update fixes Drown vulnerability

  01-03-2016 22:40
  
  An international team of researchers has uncovered an attack that can compromise encrypted network traffic in a matter of hours.
  The Drown (Decrypting RSA with Obsolete and Weakened Encryption) attack successfully decrypts TLS (transport layer security) sessions by exploiting a vulnerability in the older SSL v2 protocol that exposes private RSA keys. Once again, old cryptography is breaking the security of all online communications.[ Safeguard your data! The tools you need to encrypt your 
  
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• Legislation seeks independent panel on security and technology

  01-03-2016 22:23
  
  Bipartisan legislation introduced in Congress on Monday calls for creating an independent, 16-member national commission on security and technology challenges.
  Including its two House and Senate sponsors, the legislation has eight co-sponsors in the Senate and 16 in the House. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) are the principle sponsors.
  The commission would have two members drawn from each of th
  
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• FBI director admits mistake was made with San Bernardino iCloud reset

  01-03-2016 21:50
  
  The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has conceded it was a mistake to ask San Bernardino County to reset the password of an iCloud account that had been used by gunman Syed Farook.
  Changing the password to the account prevented the phone from making a backup to an iCloud account, which Apple could have accessed without bypassing the encryption and security settings on the phone.
  "As I understand it from the experts, there was a mistake made in that 24 hours after the attack
  
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• Use Hortonworks Hadoop? Now you can rely on a more stable core

  01-03-2016 21:47
  
  Software stability is a key requirement for large companies, and Hortonworks is taking a big step in that direction with a new release cadence for its enterprise Hadoop software.Starting with the Hortonworks Data Platform 2.4, which is now available, the company is taking a two-pronged approach to updates. Specifically, it will update core Apache Hadoop components such as HDFS, MapReduce and YARN along with Apache Zookeeper annually, while extended services that run on top of those components --
  
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• As encryption debate rages, inventors of public key encryption win prestigious Turing Award

  01-03-2016 21:17
  
  The inventors of public key cryptography have won the 2015 Turing Award, just as a contentious debate kicks off in Washington over how much protection encryption should really provide.The Association for Computing Machinery announced Tuesday that Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman received the ACM Turing Award for their contributions to cryptography.The two are credited with the invention of public key cryptography, which is widely used to scramble data so it can be sent securely between users
  
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• Review: 5 application security testing tools compared

  01-03-2016 21:11
  Application security is arguably the biggest cyber threat, responsible for 90 percent of security incidents, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Yet it suffers from not-my-job syndrome, or, as SANS put it in its 2015 State of Application Security report, "Many information security engineers don’t understand software development — and most software developers don’t understand security."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider S
  
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• IoT users could win with a new bill in the US Senate

  01-03-2016 21:10
  
  Four U.S. senators have proposed a bill that would call on the Federal Communications Commission to study the need for more spectrum to connect Internet of Things devices.The bill, proposed by a bipartisan group of senators, would require the FCC to look at whether there is enough spectrum to support the continued growth of IoT. The agency also would have to study regulatory barriers to providing more licensed and unlicensed spectrum for IoT. The FCC would have to report back to Congress with re
  
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• CIO Quick Takes: Pick your tech buzzword

  01-03-2016 21:01
  
  I want to let you all in on a little secret: The IT industry is littered with buzzwords.David L. Stevens, CIO, Maricopa CountyWe in the tech press certainly play a role, and we throw around our share of buzzwords — as do vendors, consultants and analysts. While there is no shortage of candidates for the most over-used terms, working with our colleagues at the CIO Executive Council, we asked three CIOs for their picks of the most hyped and least meaningful buzzwords. And the answers we
  
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• The 5 things that would have made Raspberry Pi 3 better

  01-03-2016 20:36
  
  What can you fit into a Raspberry Pi board while still keeping the price to $35? That's a question Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton wrestled with when planning the third version of the product.He opted for a faster 64-bit ARM processor and wireless features so Raspberry Pi 3 could be a PC as well as a board for cool new devices. Other features had to be left out.But Upton has a never-say-die attitude -- if a new technology is available at a reasonable cost, it will be added to future versions of the
  
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• Crypto dream team Diffie & Hellman wins $1M 'Nobel Prize of Computing'

  01-03-2016 20:17
  
  Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, whose names have been linked since their seminal paper introduced the concepts of public key encryption and digital signatures some 40 years ago, have been named winners of the 2015 ACM A.M. Turing Award (a.k.a., the "Nobel Prize of Computing").
  The work of MIT grad Diffie, formerly chief security officer of Sun Microsystems, and Hellman, professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford University, has had a huge impact on the secure exchange of info
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: MIT adds twist to healthcare sustainability

  01-03-2016 20:03
  
  Healthcare consumes one-sixth of the U.S. economy, costing citizens an estimated $2.7 trillion annually, with twenty to thirty percent of wasted. The U.S. must address the soaring cost of healthcare. Universal access to healthcare is not sustainable – everyone knows this fact. Today no viable solutions to this problem exist. Can financial sector innovations shoulder the burden and solve healthcare sustainability for America?In a recent paper published February 24, 2016 in Science Translati
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How to do more with less in IT

  01-03-2016 20:00
  
  Many companies are striving to be more agile, efficient and productive in response to uncertain economic conditions in 2016.  Capital projects have been cancelled while companies shift their attention to surviving in the current environment without hindering their ability to expand in the future. Functional areas are facing significant pressure to cut costs and "do more with less." Successful cost reduction or right-sizing efforts result in organizational realignment, process improvement an
  
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• New DisplayPort 1.4 standard to support 8K displays, work with USB-C

  01-03-2016 19:42
  Big changes are coming to the popular DisplayPort display standard, with version 1.4 promising support for 8K displays.DisplayPort 1.4 will allow 8K displays to hook up to laptops, smartphones and other devices via a USB Type-C port. The new standard was announced by VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association) on Tuesday.The USB Type-C connector is already gaining popularity, so DisplayPort 1.4 will be easy to implement in devices. There's another 8K connector called SuperMHL under developmen
  
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• Cisco enters storage, hyperconvergence market with data center splash

  01-03-2016 19:00
  
  SAN DIEGO – Cisco this week is throwing its hat into the hyperconvergence and software-defined storage ring with a system co-developed with software company SpringPath.
  Cisco is also rolling out at its Cisco Partner Summit here a new generation of Nexus 9000 data center switches featuring 25G/50G Ethernet based on custom ASICs. The new products dovetail with Cisco’s acquisition today of CliQr, a maker of “application-defined” hybrid cloud orchestration software for deplo
  
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• How to be an effective transformation advisor

  01-03-2016 18:59
  
  IT leaders want to be consultative digital transformation advisors and partners to the business. However, many of them are frustrated in this effort because they are not consulted or invited to take part in key decision-making discussions. Even those who have had a place at the table are seeing their influence erode. CIOs are sidelined — ousted from the leadership circle — at 37 percent of companies, according to an IDC survey of more than 300 line of business manager. Even when CIO
  
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• New TLS decryption attack affects one in three servers due to legacy SSLv2 support

  01-03-2016 18:33
  
  Security researchers have discovered a new weakness that could allow attackers to spy on encrypted communications between users and one in three HTTPS servers.The problem exits because many HTTPS servers still support the old and insecure SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) version 2 protocol. SSLv2 was superseded by SSLv3 in 1996, but only officially deprecated in 2011. SSLv3 was replaced, too, by the more modern TLS (Transport Layer Security) versions 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2.SSLv2 should never be used for enc
  
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• VMware President Eschenbach bolts to become a VC

  01-03-2016 17:39
  
  VMware’s President and COO Carl Eschenbach is leaving the company to pursue a career in venture capital, marking a second high-ranking executive to leave VMware in as many weeks for the startup funding world.
  +MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Why Martin Casado left VMware | Casado’s departure raises questions about NSX’s future in the cloud +
  Since 2002 Eschenbach has held various sales positions at VMware and became president in 2012, overseeing the company’s $6 billion sales, ch
  
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• Microsoft, Raspberry Pi want you to launch Pi 3-based IoT, smart-home businesses

  01-03-2016 17:33
  
  Microsoft and Raspberry Pi want people to build businesses and start Kickstarter campaigns around cool devices making use of the new Raspberry Pi 3 computer.The companies are teaming up to provide an entire package needed to build Internet of Things and smart devices, including hardware, OS and cloud services. The goal is to help Raspberry Pi 3 users take their envisioned devices from concepts to the end market.Microsoft is previewing a new edition of its Windows 10 IoT Core operating system for
  
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• VR gets greasy with McDonald's 'Happy Goggles'

  01-03-2016 17:04
  
  DIY virtual reality (VR) on Monday just might have officially leaped the ol' Great White. (Monday was February 29, "leap day," after all. Coincidence?)
  McDonald's Sweden issued a press release yesterday about a new marketing initiative that will roll out Happy Meal boxes that can be easily converted into Google Cardboard-esque VR viewers at 14 different Mickey D's locations across Sweden, according to RoadToVR.com, starting this weekend.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Transmission 2.9 makes torrenting even better in OS X

  01-03-2016 16:56
  Transmission is an open source torrenting client that has proven to be quite popular among OS X users. The latest release is version 2.9 and it offers an updated user interface and numerous other bug fixes and enhancements.Here's a list of OS X changes from the Transmission 2.9 release notes:
  UI fixes for OS X 10.9+Trim potential URIs from clipboardAllow downloading files from http servers (not https) on OS X 10.11+Change Sparkle Update URL to use HTTPS instead of HTTP (addresses Sparkle vulnera
  
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• Why CIOs to be proactive not reactive to cybersecurity threats

  01-03-2016 16:51
  
  The greatest cyberthreat might not be a massively destabilizing attack that takes out the electrical grid or some other piece of critical infrastructure. Instead, the most significant risk could come from the accumulated damage of a constant barrage of attacks that shake the collective confidence in the Internet as a platform.So argues Rick Howard, chief security officer at Palo Alto Networks."I really think that we are on the verge of having this affect our way of life," Howard said during a re
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Chief IoT Officer will be another cost saving for the CEO

  01-03-2016 16:49
  
  A flurry of recent postings predicts that the Chief Internet of Things Officer (CIoT) will be the new seat at the table in the C-Suite.  The enthusiasm is probably a result of the now annual New Year’s discussions of the impact the Internet of Things (IoT) is going to have on business.  The role may have been first postulated a year ago by Jeff Kaplan at which time he surmised that the need for an IoT strategy justified a new C-level role.  The logic behind the need for lead
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: CIO strategy for driving IT innovation

  01-03-2016 16:23
  
  If you’re a CIO trying to push a change-based agenda through a traditional IT business, where do you start – especially if the change is a mandate for you to turn the company into an innovation powerhouse?I spoke recently with Sam Esfahani, and we had an interesting conversation about how he achieved that corporate mandate when he was brought on board as CIO at PSCU Financial Services. Competition in its market is very aggressive. The company provides technology and services (credit,
  
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• Nederland mist kansen door laag aandeel vrouwen in IT

  01-03-2016 16:20
  Het aandeel van vrouwen in de IT-sector is in Nederland heel laag vergeleken met  andere landen. Organisaties hebben echter behoefte aan specialisten die een brug kunnen slaan tussen business en IT en daar kunnen vrouwen juist een belangrijke rol in spelen. Nyenrode Business Universiteit en RightBrains moedigen... lees meer
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: $35 Raspberry Pi 3 comes with built in wireless and Bluetooth

  01-03-2016 16:03
  
  The Raspberry Pi Foundation has launched an improved version of the credit card sized computer, the Pi 3. This 3rd serving of Raspberry Pi comes with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth baked in.
  Raspberry Pi 3 is powered by a 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU, replacing the 900MHz 32-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU that's in previous generations. It comes with 1GB of RAM, integrated 802.11n wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.1. The new devices are fully compatible with the previous generation Pis.
  Broadcom
  
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• The encryption quicksand into which Apple is sinking

  01-03-2016 16:00
  
  As the encryption argument takes center stage in the ongoing Apple vs. the U.S. Government squabbles, a very important—and potentially destructive—change is taking place in security strategy.
  The encryption and security thinking used to be focused solely on protecting a customer's data from cyberthieves and other bad guys attempting to break in. It then morphed to also see law enforcement as the attacker, putting in various defenses to keep out municipal, state, federal and global i
  
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• LinkedIn takes to TV with 'moon shot' ad

  01-03-2016 15:58
  
  LinkedIn kicked off a new marketing campaign for 2016 with its first broadcast TV commercial, which aired during last weekend's 88th annual Academy Awards. The company behind the 14-year-old social network for professionals says it wants to find new ways to connect with its 414 million registered users. The "You're Closer Than You Think" ad is an attempt to raise global awareness of the platform's career enhancing possibilities, according to Nick Bartle, LinkedIn's vice president of member mark
  
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• Microsoft could lose No. 1 browser spot as soon as May

  01-03-2016 15:46
  
  Microsoft's browsers took a beating of historical proportions last month, losing user share at a rate that could put it in second place, behind Google, as early as May, new data signaled today.
  The several editions of Internet Explorer (IE) and two versions of Edge lost a combined 2.1 percentage points of user share in February, the largest one-month decline for Microsoft in the 11 years of recorded statistics that Computerworld has compiled from metrics vendor Net Applications.
  IE and Edge --
  
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• Cisco acquires cloud orchestrator CliQr

  01-03-2016 15:22
  
  Cisco this week announced its intention to acquire CliQr Technologies, a privately-held developer of “application-defined” cloud orchestration software for $260 million.
  CliQr’s software allows cloud operators to deploy and manage applications across bare metal, virtualized and container environments. Cisco says the acquisition will help its customers configure and operate private, public and hybrid cloud deployments.
  CliQr is already integrated with a number of Cisco's data c
  
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• Mobiele apparaten spelen belangrijke rol bij datalekken

  01-03-2016 15:07
  Mobiele apparatuur vormt een belangrijke factor bij datalekken. Meer dan de helft van de data die toegankelijk is op pc’s is ook toegankelijk op mobiele apparaten en mobiele toegang tot zakelijke data is de laatste twee jaar met 43% toegenomen. Daarop duidt wereldwijd onderzoek onder grote bedrijven... lees meer
  
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• Here's the password you should never use for an RDP system

  01-03-2016 15:01
  A year-long experiment that baited hackers to try and break into systems netted an interesting result: a single letter, x, was one of the most common password guesses.
  Rapid7, an IT security company, set up honeypots that were designed to mimic systems running RDP (remote desktop protocol). The protocol is used to remotely login into a system and is often run by POS (point-of-sale) devices, kiosks and other Windows systems.
  Attackers often scan the Internet to find RDP systems and then try
  
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• Cybercriminals face hacker talent shortage

  01-03-2016 15:00
  
  Cybercriminals and hacktivists face many of the same hiring problems as defending security organizations, but with their own particular twists, according to report released this morning.
  There is a lack of qualified candidates for jobs such as malware writers, exploit developers, bot net operators, and mules, according to a report by Digital Shadows.
  In addition, cybercriminals are limited in their ability to properly vet new hires, to widely advertise for needed talent, and to find people who
  
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• AMD's shipping its fastest desktop chip with an integrated GPU

  01-03-2016 15:00
  
  AMD is shattering a speed record with the A10-7890K processor chip, its fastest yet with integrated graphics. 
  The chip sits at the top of all AMD A-series PC processors and is now shipping for $165.Users will be able to build gaming desktops for under US$500 with the chip, which can handle 3D and high-definition gaming, AMD said.The chip, based on the Godavari architecture, has a horsepower of 1.02 teraflops, marginally faster than AMD's A10-7870K.The new chip's performance is si
  
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• AMD's evergreen Athlon lives on as a bridge to Zen chips

  01-03-2016 15:00
  
  In the early 2000s, AMD's Athlon chips rocked the PC market with innovative features like 64-bit processing capabilities, and Intel had to scramble to catch up.Today, the Athlon brand remains alive and well, though AMD's scrappy underdog reputation has taken a hit as it has lost market share to Intel. AMD wants to rekindle its PC glory days with upcoming Zen chips later this year, and hopes a new Athlon chip will hold the interest of budget-conscious gamers until then.AMD's new Athlon X4 880K ch
  
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• IT career roadmap: The journey to digital marketing executive

  01-03-2016 14:55
  
  Kristine Spence never set out to have a career in digital marketing -- in fact, when she entered the job market, the term didn't even exist. But as technology evolved, so has the role, and Spence's career has evolved along with it.Spence graduated from Florida International University with a bachelor's degree in Hospitality Management and began her career handling day-to-day management for a Walt Disney World resort restaurant group. When the opportunity arose for Spence to move into a sales and
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How to turn your IT crisis into an opportunity

  01-03-2016 14:49
  
  If you’ve been an IT leader for a while chances are you have a major system failure or two under your belt.Whether it was a network outage, the email system going down, or a business application that stopped working -- you've probably experienced the stress of a major system failure.A thin line between love and hate
  When systems are up and running your business partners are happy and everything is right with the world.But when a failure occurs that limits or prevents the business from oper
  
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• 5 ways to stop malware in the cloud

  01-03-2016 14:36
  
  SAN FRANCISCO -- It starts out innocently enough. You’re in HR and there’s a job opening that you’re hoping to fill as quickly as possible.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Firms expect greater government cybersecurity oversight

  01-03-2016 14:14
  
  The U.S. Senate recently proposed a cybersecurity disclosure bill that would require public companies to describe what cybersecurity expertise their boards have, or, if they don't have any, what steps the companies are taking to get some expertise onto their boards.
  "It seems like a pretty simple and straightforward bill," said Chris Wysopal, CTO and CISO at Veracode. "It doesn't have anything onerous except some disclosures about the board. To me, it has a chance of passing."
  The bill fits nea
  
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• Malvertising campaigns are becoming harder to detect

  01-03-2016 14:05
  Jerome Segura, a senior security researcher with Malwarebytes, was recently stumped by a cyberattack he was studying. It seemed to keep vanishing.Segura often studies malvertising, which involves seeding ad networks with harmful online advertisements that then appear on websites, potentially delivering malware to a person's computer.It's a particularly insidious type of attack, since a person merely has to view an advertisement to become infected if their computer has a software vulnerability.&n
  
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• Verizon releases first-ever data breach digest with security case studies

  01-03-2016 14:00
  
  Verizon is known for its huge annual Data Breach Investigations Report, but this morning it released a less data-heavy digest organized by case study.
  The digest tells the stories of 18 common scenarios that many attacks fall into, and is intended to be used at a higher level than than the full data breach report, as well as for end user training and security awareness.
  "Everyone is told by their company, 'Do this, don't do that' and they may not understand why," said Chris Novak, director of i
  
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• What CIOs need to know about hybrid tablets

  01-03-2016 13:44
  
  In the past few years, notebooks have gotten more complicated. Today, if you look for a new notebook, you’re met with a slew of options including a lot of devices that look like tablets, but act like notebooks, or vice versa. Gartner states that, in 2015, 13.5 million hybrid devices were shipped worldwide, which marks a 77 percent year-over-year growth and makes it the “fastest growing segment of the device market.” But while consumers have mostly embraced the tablet-hybrid op
  
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• How to hire a rock star project manager

  01-03-2016 13:34
  
  A great project manager (PM) can mean more than just the difference between project success and failure (which is important enough). With a rock star PM on your team, you can enjoy some peace of mind knowing that projects and processes are being shepherded in a professional, efficient, timely and ultimately profitable manner. Conversely, a lousy PM can have deleterious effects, including a drain on your own time and, eventually, your company’s money.Here are the things to do, consider and
  
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• NTT Com adds OpenStack, Cloud Foundry and bare metal option to global cloud service

  01-03-2016 12:54
  
  NTT Communications is adopting OpenStack in its public cloud, and introducing a bare-metal option to its hosted private cloud offering. It is also expanding connectivity and management tools for hybrid cloud environments.Japan will see the new Enterprise Cloud features first, followed later this year by the U.S., Germany, the U.K., Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong, the company said Tuesday.NTT Communications is the international networking and IT services subsidiary of Japanese telecommunicati
  
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• 4 infosec hiring tips to attract top talent

  01-03-2016 12:50
  
  Businesses are having a tough time hiring security professionals, according to new research from Dice.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• App the vote: 9 mobile tools for election junkies

  01-03-2016 12:30
  
  Mobile apps for the informed voterImage by ShutterstockWhen it comes to the presidential election, it can be mighty challenging to separate the wheat from the chaff. I'm not talking about the actual candidates (though that poses challenges as well), but rather the onslaught of news, opinion and polling that accompany the whole process. Sometimes it feels like you're standing in a hailstorm of election coverage with an umbrella made of tissue paper.To read this article in full or to leave a comme
  
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• Microsoft unveils Windows 10 feature to stymie advanced hack attacks

  01-03-2016 12:00
  
  Microsoft wants to help protect companies from hack attacks, and it's introducing a new Windows 10 feature soon to improve the operating system's security capabilities.Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection is aimed at helping businesses deal with serious threats by using machine learning to protect Windows 10 devices. The feature builds a profile of how a computer behaves, and then alerts IT managers if it starts acting in a way that's indicative of a security breach. If the system de
  
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• Hot security products at RSA 2016

  01-03-2016 12:00
  
  bugBlast Next-gen AppSec PlatformKey features – bugBlast correlates results from vulnerability testing tools with real-time threat intel for a single view of an application’s security; can massively scale to test mega-apps for software, Web and mobile. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Create maps in R in 10 (fairly) easy steps

  01-03-2016 12:00
  
  One problem with your typical election map is that it lets you see which candidate won where, but that's about it. In classic presidential election maps, that means it's easy to see if a state voted Democrat or Republican, but not necessarily which candidate actually won, thanks to large differences in U.S. population densities — giving us states like Montana, which is 4th-largest in area but tied for dead last in number of electoral votes.That's why, if you're a data geek, it can be inter
  
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• Apple, the FBI and the ghost of the Clipper chip

  01-03-2016 12:00
  
  Invading a user’s privacy was a bad idea when it was proposed in the 1990s via the ill-conceived Clipper chip, and it’s a bad idea now, no matter what name it’s given this time.Back in the days of the Clinton administration, the government wanted to force electronics manufacturers to install a chip that would allow the government (with a court order, supposedly) to have unfettered access to any and all encrypted data on the device. It proposed to do this via a scheme called &ld
  
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