IT Executive news

• BrandPost: The CFO-CIO Relationship: Closer and Ever-More Critical

  29-03-2016 22:36
  
  Over the past decade, digital transformation has become the heart and soul of today’s enterprise and shows no signs of moving from its position of front-and-center prominence. The rise of customer influence continues to challenge businesses to meet consumer needs and expectations across channels and devices. In fact, according to the ComputerWorld Forecast Study 2016, the most important goal for tech projects driving digital transformation is external facing – improving the customer
  
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• 'Torchbearer' CIOs cozy up with customers amid convergence

  29-03-2016 21:50
  
  "Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive."Former Intel CEO Andy Grove memorialized those mantras 20 years ago, but they ring true today. It takes a special breed of CIO to drive change in a world where technology is enabling enterprising startups to disrupt industry incumbents, which in turn cross over to other industries, says Michael Fitzgerald, CIO advisory leader and partner of IBM Global Business Services.In IBM’s Redefining Connections study,
  
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• GE's Jim Fowler on the CIO role in the digital industrial economy

  29-03-2016 21:44
  
  Eventually, IT will no longer be a function — it will just be the way you work. It's a copout for CIOs to require a functional executive to lead every project. To stay relevant, IT executives need to be seen as catalysts and not speed bumps, all according to GE CIO Jim Fowler.Martha Heller: What are the greatest challenges facing CIOs as a profession right now?Jim Fowler: CIOs have to find a way to establish and maintain relevance in their organizations, which will happen in two ways. From
  
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• Microsoft's mission at Build: Prove progress on promises to developers

  29-03-2016 20:39
  
  When Microsoft kicks off its annual developers conference Wednesday, it must show it has made progress on 2015's promises, analysts said today.
  "They have to demonstrate that they're building momentum from both user and developer perspectives," said Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research, referring to Windows 10 and pledges the company made last year.
  At 2015's Build -- Microsoft's moniker for its developers conference -- the Redmond, Wash. company set itself a goal of putting Windows 10
  
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• Microsoft worries Lumia fans by slowly phasing out the brand's social presence

  29-03-2016 20:12
  
  Microsoft's actions are making it increasingly hard to believe that the company has any faith in its Lumia consumer smartphone line. The company said Tuesday, a day before the start of its Build developer conference, that it's shutting down its Lumia Voices Twitter account. And a closer look at the corresponding Lumia Voices web page reveals that Microsoft seeded hardware to some of the people it profiled, rather than spotlighting existing Lumia users.
  ANNOUNCEMENT: On April 12th this acco
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Are your IT performance metrics measuring the right things?

  29-03-2016 19:37
  
  Once your IT organization aligns with business users’ needs and commits to the journey of achieving those business objectives, you can then determine how to do that. After determining your strategy, you’ll then establish metrics to measure IT’s performance. As Winston Churchill advised, “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” But if yours is like most organizations, the probability is high that your metrics will measure the wro
  
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• Total cranks up computing power to see more clearly below earth's surface

  29-03-2016 18:56
  
  Oil company Total has almost tripled the performance of Pangea, a supercomputer it uses for analyzing subsurface imaging in search of new oilfields.
  Pangea's performance is now 6.7 petaflops (floating-point operations per second), up from 2.3 petaflops, the French company said Tuesday.
  That's enough to put it among the 10 fastest supercomputers in the world, according to Total, which based its claim on rankings published last November by Top500.org, the international supercomputer ranking organ
  
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• One-fifth of IT pros say their companies had mobile data breach

  29-03-2016 18:46
  
  IT pros have long been concerned about the potential for security breaches with increased employee use of mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets owned by workers who bring in their own devices from home.
  A new survey of 882 IT professionals has quantified those concerns, revealing that one in five organizations (21%) suffered a security breach involving a mobile device sometime in the past, primarily due to connections to malicious Wi-Fi hotspots and malware.
  The online survey was co
  
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• Git 2.8 improves on code control for Windows users

  29-03-2016 18:12
  
  Version 2.8 of Git, the popular and powerful open source version control system used to power the GitHub and GitLab services, was released late yesterday.
  According to an announcement on GitHub's blog, version 2.8 includes small but useful improvements to features, as well as a range of bug fixes. Some of the most significant changes are for Windows users, but functionality across all three major platforms (Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X) will be kept in closer sync from now on.[ Get the most out
  
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• Big data gets runtime specification

  29-03-2016 17:57
  
  The Open Data Platform Initiative (ODPi) released its first ODPi Runtime Specification and test suite Monday as part of its goal to ensure a standard deployment model for enterprise big data applications across Apache Hadoop distributions."This is the culmination of this whole year's work," says John Mertic, senior manager of ODPi.The nonprofit ODPi formed last year in an effort to reduce the amount of complexity surrounding the Hadoop and big data environment. The idea was to provide a big data
  
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• The Internet of Things is all fun and games until a racist takes over your printer

  29-03-2016 16:49
  The IT departments at universities around the country just got a wake-up call about their exposed Internet-enabled printers.
  Last week, thousands of connected printers, largely at U.S. colleges and universities, began printing out racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant messages. In all cases, the printers had port 9100 exposed, and turned up in searches using Masscan, a mass IP port scanner. All it took was five lines of code to take them over.
  The hacker responsible for the racist printouts
  
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• Facebook may use Messenger to push into retail payments

  29-03-2016 16:41
  
  In March 2015, Facebook introduced its vision to turn Messenger into a platform during the company’s F8 developer’s conference. That vision included third-party app integration, sending money to friends, and the ability to place orders with online businesses inside Messenger. This year, it appears the company is getting ready to add more features to Messenger, including the ability to support in-store purchases.
  Facebook has yet to announce anything, but The Information (via The Nex
  
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• Snapchat's oldest feature still its most popular

  29-03-2016 16:33
  
  Snapchat's most popular feature is also its oldest, according to a new survey commissioned by entertainment publication Variety and conducted by Defy Media. Snapchat expanded its various formats in recent months, including new syndicated content from entertainment brands in the app's "Discover" section and curated media from users at live events in the "Live Stories" channel, but its core "disappearing" messaging feature is still the most widely used by young users.To read this article in full o
  
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• Free Bitdefender tool prevents Locky, other ransomware infections, for now

  29-03-2016 15:53
  Antivirus firm Bitdefender has released a free tool that can prevent computers from being infected with some of the most widespread file-encrypting ransomware programs: Locky, TeslaCrypt and CTB-Locker.The new Bitdefender Anti-Ransomware vaccine is built on the same principle as a previous tool that the company designed to prevent CryptoWall infections. CryptoWall later changed the way in which it operates, rendering that tool ineffective, but the same defense concept still works for other ranso
  
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• Tech giants, government struggle with online speech policies

  29-03-2016 15:21
  
  As social media outlets increasingly become the favorite channels for terrorist groups to spread messages of violence and recruit new members, the Internet companies that maintain those services are in a tough spot.Companies born on the Web like Google and Facebook promote an ethos of free speech, but at the same time recognize the dangers of terrorists, criminals and other bad actors co-opting their platforms in service of a violent ideology or illegal activities.[ Related: Eric Schmidt to head
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Digital business success requires collaboration

  29-03-2016 15:00
  
  Digital businesses are unlike any other business. In real estate, moguls are created by smart property transactions and holdings. In finance, capital, markets and strategies. For a digital business, the greatest resource are the human beings that form your team.Digital business development involves much more than creating siloed software solutions born from within IT departments -- it’s about digital leadership, market insights and technology platforms.With so many moving pieces, CIO&rsquo
  
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• FBI's top 10 most wanted cybercriminals

  29-03-2016 14:59
  
  10 most wanted cybercriminalsImage by FBITechnology brings a lot of good into the world, but with the good comes the bad. And, in this case, the bad is a new field of criminal activity -- cybercrime. In fact, according to a recent study by the Ponemon Institute, conducted in partnership with HP, cybercrime in the U.S. has risen 19 percent year-over-year. And perhaps more alarming than that, all companies will fall victim to cybercrime to some degree.Cybercrime is on the rise as technology invade
  
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• How to make sure your PC doesn't auto-install Windows 10

  29-03-2016 14:42
  
  If you're a PC user who is sick of Microsoft constantly pestering you to update your OS to Windows 10, and you're worried the out of control upgrade process will force you into an unwanted OS, I have a two-step solution. Never10 eliminates Windows 10 updates
  First is the "Never 10" tool, which automatically changes the Windows Update settings so the program doesn't start (or complete) the Windows upgrade process from Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1, without explicit permission. Of
  
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• How to use Microsoft Power BI for dashboards and more

  29-03-2016 14:17
  
  Microsoft Power BI, short for business intelligence, is a relative newcomer to Microsoft's portfolio of products aimed at business users. Employees can use Power BI to analyze all types of data, such as sales, inventory and customer engagements, to name a few. It comes in three main forms -- Power BI service (the online Software as a Service version), Power BI Desktop (which runs on the Windows desktop) and Power BI for Mobile (for Windows Phone and Windows-based tablets, as well as Android and
  
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• Education key to combating gender discrimination

  29-03-2016 14:13
  
  Sparked by the Ellen Pao vs. KPCB trial last year, seven women came together to gather stories and data around issues of feedback and promotion, inclusion, unconscious biases, motherhood and harassment and safety. Their study, The Elephant in the Valley, was fielded from February 2015 to April 2015 and surveyed 210 women who had more than 10 years experience in the IT field.The findings were depressing, though not surprising to anyone who's been paying attention: 90 percent witnessed sexist beha
  
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• Top 10 U.S. cities for women in technology

  29-03-2016 14:02
  
  It’s no secret that Silicon Valley tech companies have a gender equality problem.Of the companies that released diversity reports last year, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google ranked among the worst, reporting that between 13 percent and 18 percent of its tech jobs were held by women.At the top, as the most-inclusive of women in technology roles, were eBay (24 percent), Apple (22 percent) and Intel (20 percent) — still, all far below the target ratio.Though Silicon Valley
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 5 interview tips for assembling the best project teams

  29-03-2016 13:56
  
  You want your project management infrastructure to be the best that it can be, right? Forget the project management office (PMO). That's a nice to have if you can afford it and are big enough to need it. What I'm talking about here is just getting the right talent in the right place at the right time.If there was a list of questions that would guarantee that you get the best candidates possible for the positions you're filling on the team, that list would be like gold in someone's hands. There i
  
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• 9.7-inch iPad Pro early reviews: Better iPad comes in smaller package

  29-03-2016 13:30
  
  When Apple released the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, the iPad lineup became a little more complicated. Which model should you get? A product review can help you make a decision.
  There are plenty of first looks and hands-on reports from the March 21 event (including our own), but there are a few media outlets that got review units and were able to go in-depth with the 9.7-inch iPad Pro. Here’s a summary of what they have to say. (We’re working on our own review of the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, which
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Why I switched to the 38mm Apple Watch from the 42mm

  29-03-2016 13:00
  Quite a while back I wrote a post that explored why I switched from the 38mm Stainless Steel Apple Watch to the 42mm version. Back then the Apple Watch was still quite new, and I wasn't sure which size would work best for me.After having my 42mm Stainless Steel watch for quite a while, I recently bounced back in the other direction and I’ve moved to a 38mm Space Grey Sport model. I got the smaller watch a few days ago while I was at the local mall, and I wanted to share some of the thought
  
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• Charges against Iranian hackers are ignorant, cowardly and dangerous

  29-03-2016 13:00
  
  The indictment of seven Iranian hackers for launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against financial institutions and hacking a dam was infuriating because it assigned blame to the wrong parties.
  The real culprit didn’t go unmentioned in the indictment announced by U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch. The indictment clearly states that the seven Iranians charged with criminal hacking worked for private companies that had been hired by various elements of the Iranian govern
  
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• How predictive analytics keeps crowds flowing at Georgia Aquarium

  29-03-2016 12:14
  
  Georgia AquariumBeach Clark, VP of Data Science and Data Acquisition Technology at  Georgia AquariumTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• How to review and test backup procedures to ensure data restoration

  29-03-2016 12:05
  
  In this third approach to improving information security incident response, CSO maps your route to successful backup procedure tests and reviews. By properly testing and ensuring that your backups are existent and recoverable when data disaster rears its gruesome head, you can rest in the knowledge that information security incidents that could rob your data and interrupt its use will not also leave you without your data altogether.
  Through routine, frequent testing of the full backup and recov
  
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• Microsoft is not giving up on Universal Windows Platform

  29-03-2016 12:00
  
  Developers this week will hear a lot about Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform (UWP) for building Windows apps that run across all types of devices, according to a newly released session list for Microsoft’s annual Build conference.First introduced with Windows 8 as Windows Runtime, UWP is a key feature in Windows 10, enabling development with one API set for PCs, tablets, phones, and other form factors. Presentations will cover aspects such as the UWP App Model and adap
  
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• IT salaries 2016: How to pump up your paycheck

  29-03-2016 12:00
  
  The numbers paint a pretty rosy financial picture for IT professionals. After a respectable 3.6% rise in 2015, IT compensation is up again this year, according to Computerworld's 2016 IT Salary Survey results.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• IT careers: Do certifications really help?

  29-03-2016 12:00
  
  An IT veteran with more than 40 years of experience, George Craft got his start in the technical trenches and eventually crossed over to management, earning choice certifications along the way to advance his career. His first credential — a Certified Data Processor designation in the late 1970s — gave him credibility as a "computer guy" at a time when IT was a fledgling field, he says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Hottest jobs, cities and industries for IT pay in 2016

  29-03-2016 12:00
  
  Computerworld's 2016 IT Salary Survey shows continued strong gains for IT pros. More than 70% of the 3,301 respondents reported a pay raise this year, marking the sixth year in a row that figure has risen since hitting a low of 41% in 2010. Likewise, only 3% reported a pay cut for 2016, down from a high of 14% in 2009.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Arista takes on Cisco, Juniper at routing

  29-03-2016 12:00
  
  After much success in data center switching, Arista Networks is now trying its hand at routing.
  The company this week is targeting the incumbency of Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks in Internet routers with a new platform designed to bring the scale, simplicity and workload mobility of data center switching to cloud routing. The Arista 7500R is based on Broadcom’s “Jericho” silicon enhanced with routing code in Arista’s EOS operating system.
  +MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: Ari
  
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• 10 tech specialties with rising salaries

  29-03-2016 12:00
  
  On the whole, the financial news has been good for IT professionals. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that IT employment grew 3.1% in 2015, and 44% of IT managers who participated in Computerworld's 2016 IT Salary Survey said they expect to expand their IT staffs this year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• FBI hack may raise questions about iPhone security

  29-03-2016 08:51
  
  The FBI hack of an iPhone 5c running iOS 9 may have left the device just a little bit insecure in the eyes of some users, as the agency has not provided details of how it was able to access data on the phone used by the San Bernardino terrorist.On Monday, the FBI told the court that the government had successfully accessed the data stored on the iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook and no longer required the assistance it was demanding in court from Apple.But the FBI did not disclose in the court f
  
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• Large US healthcare provider's network shut down by malware

  29-03-2016 03:15
  
  A large healthcare provider in the Washington, D.C., area said it has resorted to paper transactions after malware crippled part of its network early Monday.MedStar Health, a not-for-profit that runs 10 hospitals, said its clinical facilities were functioning and that it did not appear data had been compromised. The malware prevented "certain users from logging into our system.""MedStar acted quickly to prevent the virus from spreading throughout the organization," it said in a statement posted
  
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• Never10 is a free app for when you absolutely, positively don't want Windows 10

  29-03-2016 02:31
  If you’ve decided that no, you’re never, ever going to upgrade to Windows 10, the free Never10 app might be just what you’re looking for.
  Steve Gibson, the author of the popular freeware Shields UP! anonymity app, has released Never10 for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 PCs. The idea is simple: The Never10 software will hide in the background and block any attempts by Microsoft to upgrade your system to Windows 10. 
  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please cli
  
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• New York company profited by sending state records to India

  29-03-2016 02:29
  
  A New York IT contractor "swelled its profits" by outsourcing government work offshore that should not have left the state. A major part of the work was sent to India in violation of state security rules, New York investigators said.
  The contractor, Focused Technologies Imaging Services in Albany County, was working under a $3.45 million contract to scan and index22 million fingerprint cards maintained by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services.
  Focused Technologies, in turn, h
  
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• This is the first 3D-printed drug to win FDA approval

  29-03-2016 02:28
  
  The first 3D-printed drug to receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now being shipped to pharmacies.
  Pennsylvania-based Aprecia Pharmaceuticals said its 3D-printed Spritam (levetiracetam) tablets are used to treat epilepsy. The company is also working on at least three other 3D-printed drugs that it expects to eventually bring to market.
  Aprecia said it used some off-the-shelf 3D printer parts but mostly developed its own technology to create the drugs, layer by la
  
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• FireEye says hackers are racing to compromise POS systems

  29-03-2016 01:40
  
  Cybercriminals are redoubling efforts to steal payment card details from retailers before new defenses are put in place, according to FireEye.More than a dozen types of malware were found last year that target point-of-sale systems, the electronic cash registers the process payments at many retailers.Over the last few years, hackers have successfully breached the systems, targeting weaknesses or software vulnerabilities in order to extract card details to sell on the black market.As of last Octo
  
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• Samsung's smart motorcycle windshield uses your phone to power a virtual dashboard

  29-03-2016 00:00
  
  Samsung's brewed up a fresh idea of how to bring a smart dashboard system to the motorcycle with a new concept called the Samsung Smart Windshield. It’s a kind of heads-up—eyes slightly down, really—display that allows motorcyclists to keep their hands on the handlebars and still interact with their phones.
  The basic idea is that you connect your smartphone (via Wi-Fi and a dedicated app) to a device embedded in your bike that includes a projector. When you’re on the roa
  
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