IT Executive news

• Read Arista’s CEO customer letter on Cisco patent infringement verdict

  27-06-2016 23:54
  
  Arista’s President & CEO Jayshree Ullal issued a letter to customers who may have been worried over the impact of last week’s US International Trade Commission ruling that the company had infringed on three Cisco patents.
  The ITC on June 23rd issued a limited exclusion order and cease and desist order that will forbid Arista from importing products (with these specific infringed features) into the U.S., Ullal wrote.
  “We recently released a new version of EOS (4.16.6M) that
  
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• Cloud computing slows energy demand, U.S. says

  27-06-2016 23:23
  
  Ten years ago, power usage at data centers was growing at an unsustainable rate, soaring 24% from 2005 to 2010. But a shift to virtualization, cloud computing and improved data center management is reducing energy demand.
  According to a new study, data center energy use is expected to increase just 4% from 2014 to 2020, despite growing demand for computing resources.
  Total data center electricity usage in the U.S., which includes powering servers, storage, networking and the infrastructure to s
  
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• 54% off Toshiba Canvio Connect II 1TB Portable Hard Drive - Deal Alert

  27-06-2016 23:16
  
  Toshiba's Canvio Connect II is an all-in-one portable storage solution, able to back up files and folders, or an entire system. This model stores 1TB of data, with an additional 10GB of cloud storage included for free. When connected to your computer, files can be accessed remotely from any of your other devices. The unit is equipped with backup and recovery software. Password protection can be enabled as well for added peace of mind. The ultra portable and super fast Canvio Connect II averages
  
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• NASA’s hot Juno Juniper mission

  27-06-2016 23:12
  
  The big missionImage by NASANASA’s Juno spacecraft, once described as a flying armored tank, has almost reached its destination: Juniper. Once arriving July 4 the spacecraft will spend a year surveying Jupiter to find out, among other things whether there is a solid core beneath its multi-colored clouds, how much water is in its atmosphere and map Jupiter's magnetic and gravity fields. Underneath its dense cloud cover, Jupiter holds secrets to the fundamental processes and conditions that
  
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• A hacker wants to sell 10 million patient records on the black market

  27-06-2016 22:24
  
  A hacker claims to have stolen close to 10 million patient records and is selling them for about US$820,000.
  Over the weekend, the hacker, called thedarkoverlord, began posting the sale of the records on TheRealDeal, a black market found on the deep Web. (It can be visited through a Tor browser.)
  The data includes names, addresses, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers – all of which could be used to commit identity theft or access the patient’s bank accounts.
  These records ar
  
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• A hacker wants to sell 10 million patient records on a black market

  27-06-2016 22:24
  
  A hacker claims to have stolen close to 10 million patient records and is selling them for about US$820,000.Over the weekend, the hacker, called thedarkoverlord, began posting the sale of the records on TheRealDeal, a black market found on the deep Web. (It can be visited through a Tor browser.)The data includes names, addresses, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers – all of which could be used to commit identity theft or access the patient’s bank accounts.These records are be
  
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• Customer wins $10K judgment from Microsoft over unauthorized Windows 10 upgrade

  27-06-2016 22:21
  
  Microsoft last month paid a California travel agent $10,000 after she won a judgment in small claims court by successfully arguing that an unauthorized upgrade to Windows 10 crippled her work PC.
  Teri Goldstein, the owner of Sausalito, Calif.-based TG Travel Group LLC, said that she had not approved the upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10. After the upgrade repeatedly failed, the machine was almost unusable, frequently crashing and forcing her to restore files, not recognizing her external har
  
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• Microsoft's open sourcing of .NET hits a major milestone

  27-06-2016 22:06
  
  Microsoft's open source programming language push reached a new milestone Monday, with the company announcing the general availability of .NET Core and ASP.NET Core 1.0.Those two projects are an attempt by Microsoft to make the core elements of its programming language available for use on Linux and OS X, operating systems that previously didn't support it. To reach this milestone, more than 18,000 developers, representing 1,300 companies, contributed to .NET Core.It's all part of Microsoft
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: OpenSUSE comes to Linode

  27-06-2016 22:02
  
  The openSUSE Conference in Nürnberg, Germany concluded on Sunday and today cloud hosting provider Linode announced that it is now offering openSUSE as an option on its virtual servers.
  Linode customers can get openSUSE 13.1, which reaches end-of-life in November 2016. Also available is openSUSE 13.2, which reaches end-of-life between January and March of 2017. Once 13.1 and 13.2 expire, they'll no longer be available from the Linode Manager.
  OpenSUSE Leap 42.1 will be available to Linode c
  
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• Qualcomm wants to bring LTE to more IoT devices

  27-06-2016 21:32
  
  Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are common in battery-powered sensor devices, but Qualcomm wants to also make LTE a common feature in such devices.
  Qualcomm makes some of the most advanced modems for mobile devices, but the company is now tuning them for Internet of Things devices by lowering power consumption and improving performance.
  The latest MDM9207-1 modem chipset, announced last year, is now available from the chip-maker. It is part of the MDM9x07 chipset family, for which Qualcomm has secured
  
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• HPE's CTO is leaving amid more change at the company

  27-06-2016 21:03
  
  Hewlett-Packard Enterprise can't seem to settle down. Nine months after it separated from HP's PC and printer group and a month after it said it would spin off its enterprise services division, CEO Meg Whitman has announced yet more changes that will see CTO Martin Fink leave at the end of the year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Red Hat polishes JBoss EAP for a cloud-native future

  27-06-2016 20:33
  
  Red Hat on Monday rolled out a major new release to its JBoss Enterprise Application Platform that's designed to offer better support for containers and cloud-native applications.It's been 10 years since Red Hat acquired JBoss, but much has changed in the technology world since then. Now, JBoss EAP 7 is optimized for cloud environments, Red Hat says. The platform combines Java EE 7 APIs (application programming interfaces) with key DevOps tools including Red Hat’s JBoss Developer Studio in
  
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• BrandPost: Big Data is More Than a Trend for Manufacturing

  27-06-2016 20:25
  
  Many manufacturers have been collecting and tracking data on machines, production, and inventory for years. The new opportunity that makes big data more than a trend for manufacturers is the insight that data provides into operating a more efficient business.One company, FloraCraft, the world's largest maker and supplier of floral foam products, has 3,500 active SKUs that it kept track of through various reports. While the reports provided some information, it didn’t make forecasting or pl
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: What is the future of branch banking?

  27-06-2016 20:23
  
  With more and more banking being done online, what is the future of branch banking? Will it have a place in the future? Will it remain a profit center or migrate to a cost center? Watch the video below and let's discuss. (8 Mins)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: How to avoid a digital strategy failure

  27-06-2016 20:12
  
  There's a lot of shiny new objects in space – in the digital space, that is. So, there's a lot going on in organizations – from integrating social networks to accepting electronic payments to going mobile to data-driven decision-making to transforming into a “digital organization.”With so many potential assets demanding new initiatives, executives are busy devising "digital strategies." Of course, vendor-pushed technologies could meet real organizational needs t
  
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• DHS wants to predict how malware will morph

  27-06-2016 19:59
  
  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wants to be able to predict what form malware will morph to so it can plan how to block it when it becomes reality.
  DHS has granted Charles River Analytics in Cambridge, Mass., $500,000 to develop the technology, known as Predictive Malware Defense (PMD).
  Charles River will use machine learning and statistical models to predict attacks based on new malware as well as create defenses ahead of time. The models will look at features of families of malware
  
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• Google’s Sundar Pichai has been hacked - which CEO will be next?

  27-06-2016 19:47
  
  Google CEO Sundar Pichai has become the latest tech executive to have a social media account hacked, and the group responsible says more targets will follow.
  On Sunday, a group of hackers calling themselves OurMine briefly took over Pichai’s  account on Quora, a question-and-answer site.
  "We are just testing your security,” the hackers wrote, with the same message auto-posted via Quora to Pichai’s Twitter account. On Monday, the posts had been deleted.
  OurMine is the same
  
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• Microsoft-backed Langauge Server Protocol strives for language, tools interoperability

  27-06-2016 19:35
  
  Microsoft, Red Hat, and Codenvy are leading the charge on a new protocol to integrate multiple languages with different IDEs and code editors
  Language Server Protocol, which will be officially unveiled today, features a JSON-based data exchange protocol for providing language services consistently across different code editors and IDEs. The protocol can be used between client tools and language servers to integrate features such as auto complete, goto definition, and find all referenc
  
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• EU is preparing adwords antitrust complaint against Google

  27-06-2016 18:59
  
  Google may soon be the target of a third set of charges from Europe's top antitrust authority, this time concerning the advertising services that generate the majority of its revenue.The European Commission has asked companies that submitted evidence to its antitrust investigation to remove confidential material from their documents, a step that often precedes the filing of formal charges, Politico.eu and Bloomberg reported Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click
  
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• Bart ransomware shows it can be effective without sophisticated encryption

  27-06-2016 18:54
  A new ransomware program making the rounds uses a simple, yet effective technique to make user files inaccessible: locking them in password-protected ZIP archives.The new threat is called Bart and shares some similarities -- in the ransom note in particular -- with Locky, a much more widespread ransomware program. It is distributed through spam emails that masquerade as photos.The emails have ZIP attachments that contain JavaScript files. These files can be run directly on Windows without the ne
  
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• Google is building its own smartphone, report says

  27-06-2016 18:16
  
  We may soon see a true Google phone. 
  Yes, there’s the Nexus line, which are phones that Google sells in close partnership with a rotating cast of hardware makers. But according to a Telegraph report, Google is going to build its own smartphone from scratch, just as it’s done with the Pixel Chromebooks and tablet. 
  The thinking is that this would allow Google to more directly compete with Apple for the high end of the smartphone market, which is still dominated by the iPho
  
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• Is Desktop-as-a-Service ready for business?

  27-06-2016 18:09
  
  For companies looking to reduce the cost and complexity of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), the attraction of Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) is that you can greatly reduce up-front investment. “It’s pay as you go and you only pay for what you need,” says Mark Lockwood, research director at Gartner.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Use Android apps on HP's upcoming $189 Chromebook 11 G5

  27-06-2016 18:00
  
  If you're looking for alternatives to Windows laptops, there's a new incentive to consider Chromebooks: some of them can run Android apps.And if you're looking for such a device under $200, HP just announced its Chromebook 11 G5. The entry-level laptop starts at $189 and offers 12.5 hours of battery life.The laptop is available with or without a touchscreen. Just as touchscreens are used for smartphone and tablet apps, touch capabilities are important in running many Android apps, and more Chrom
  
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• Microsoft moves on open source .Net, ramps up multilanguage tools

  27-06-2016 18:00
  
  Microsoft today will release the 1.0 versions of its open source .Net Core and ASP. Net Core technologies, which open up its .Net software development platform and extend it to Linux and popular mobile platforms. The company also is working on a protocol that enables multiple language support in any tool.
  .Net Core provides a modular subset of the company's .Net Framework programming model and is intended to to promote code reuse and code-sharing. ASP.Net Core is for building cloud-based,
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Does Apple's ecosystem lock in users?

  27-06-2016 18:00
  One of the great things about using Apple’s products is that they all tend to work together in a way that the company’s competitors still can’t match. But not everyone is sure that it’s worth it to become enmeshed in Apple’s ecosystem, and one redditor recently asked if it was all really worth it.I’ll share my own thoughts below, but first let’s take a look at what was said in the Reddit thread.RegesVobis asked his question in the Apple subreddit:
  I&rsqu
  
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• A lawsuit over an unwanted Windows 10 upgrade just cost Microsoft $10,000

  27-06-2016 16:48
  A travel agent in California recently took Microsoft to court over the company’s Windows 10 upgrade tactics, and she won.
  After an unauthorized Windows 10 upgrade borked her small business PC, Teri Goldstein from Sausalito, California sued Microsoft over the issue, as first reported by The Seattle Times. In the end, the judge sided with Goldstein and Microsoft had to pay $10,000 to compensate her for her troubles. Microsoft told the Times it opted not to appeal the matter in order to avoi
  
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• Chick-fil-A stays cool (and safe) with IoT sensors

  27-06-2016 16:17
  
  Food safety was thrust into the public consciousness in 2015 after salmonella and E.coli outbreaks sickened people at Chipotle. Determined to avoid such public relations disasters, quick-service restaurants are taking extra precautions to keep customers healthy and ensure that their products comply with health inspection standards. Chick-fil-A, whose commercials feature chicken-shilling cattle, is using wireless sensors to monitor the temperature of walk-in coolers and freezers. Yes -- the Inter
  
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• 20% off Nest Learning Thermostat Through July 4 - Deal Alert

  27-06-2016 15:57
  
  The Nest learning thermostat learns from you and programs itself, so it is cooling and heating more efficiently and saving you money. Plus, it can be controlled from anywhere on earth through your mobile device. So coming home from vacation no longer means coming back to a blisteringly hot house. Nest claims that on average people save 10% to 15% on heating and cooling bills, so this is one of those products that aims to pay for itself. Nest also works with "Alexa". It averages 4.5 out of 5 star
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Are you managing your department as a business?

  27-06-2016 15:47
  
  Are you a CIO that us running your department as a business, because it seems so logical and it sounds like it should be of tremendous benefit to your organization. It really does sound like a great idea, but just what are the real benefits to a company if it chooses to operate its IT center as a business - and why should it be the approach that your company adopts?The answer lies in getting the most out of your IT department, and that means more than just efficient operation, but it includes al
  
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• Obama, Zuckerberg push better broadband, innovative startups

  27-06-2016 15:31
  
  President Obama marked the 7th annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit with a visit to Silicon Valley and the announcement of a host of initiatives aimed at boosting Internet connectivity and promoting the development of innovative startups at home and abroad.[ Related: Obama pushes tech startup community for more diversity ]Obama was joined by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who along with entrepreneurs from Africa and South America called for a global regulatory climate that would be friendlier to
  
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• IRS kills electronic filing PIN feature due to repeated attacks

  27-06-2016 15:19
  
  After repeated attacks, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service has decided to retire a Web-based tool for obtaining PINs that taxpayers could use to file tax returns electronically.The Electronic Filing (E-file) PINs Web application is no longer available on the IRS website "because of questionable activity," the agency announced last week.In February, the IRS disclosed that hackers used stolen taxpayer information like names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth and full addresses in order to obt
  
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• Boost your security: Get IT and HR to collaborate

  27-06-2016 15:12
  
  Ask what department is responsible for data security in an organization and the most likely answer is, “IT.” But some experts are saying it shouldn’t be IT alone – that better security requires a closer collaboration with Human Resources (HR).
  One example, they say, is a breach this past Feb. 26 at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), when a departing employee inadvertently downloaded 44,000 customer records, including personally identifiable information (PI
  
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• Report: Security teams plagued by poorly managed identity data

  27-06-2016 15:03
  
  Security teams handling Identity and access management (IAM) are hampered by dirty data and need management help from a chief data officer, according to a new report by TechVision Research.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Don't let stress and a crazy pace kill your culture

  27-06-2016 14:07
  
  Tech companies have a reputation of being high pressure and fast-paced -- especially startups. That culture can quickly erode morale as employees begin to feel the strain of the long hours and rapid, and sometimes confusing, change.A 2015 study from VitalSmarts, a leadership training company, interviewed 827 tech employees, to look at how culture affects performance in tech companies. The study identified some key ideas around culture and how it can positively or negatively affect the overall pe
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Microsoft and IBM want to own your blockchain

  27-06-2016 14:00
  
  A few days ago, Microsoft announced the release of Project Bletchley, a new addition to its blockchain technology stack. Conceptually, Project Bletchley expands the blockchain capabilities within Azure to a new level by complementing the distributed ledger with a series of building blocks that will enable enterprises to build business solutions powered by the blockchain. The release of Project Bletchley is the latest major step from Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) incumbents to incorporate blockch
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Connectivity is the new currency

  27-06-2016 14:00
  
  A frequent theme of this blog is my disdain for jargon, but sometimes one has to admit defeat. I battled for years against what today we call “outsourcing governance,” arguing it was not governance at all, and I had the dictionary definitions to prove it. I thought “cloud” was just a euphemism for the way companies could repackage existing assets, and that the only new capability it offered was dynamic provisioning. And don’t even get me started on what passes for
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Brexit, Custer's Last Stand, Disco Demolition Night and other regretful project decisions

  27-06-2016 13:36
  
  The Brexit voteOh, what have we gotten ourselves into? Great Britain has chosen to leave the European Union by popular vote in a referendum. The economy there is taking an immediate hit, the U.S. economy is taking an immediate hit, and thousands of Brits who work in other areas of Europe freely may be stranded and wondering how companies will pay them and how much harder their commute and travel will be – or if it even will be possible at all. Where's the forethought and long-range plannin
  
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• The heartbeat of open source projects can be heard with GitHub data

  27-06-2016 13:30
  
  GitHub released charts last week that tell a story about the heartbeat of a few open source, giving insights into activity, productivity and collaboration of software development.Why are these important? Enterprises increasingly define software development as a top priority to gain competitive advantage or defend against disruption. They often turn to open source software because it is fast and agile. Enterprise IT decision makers should understand GitHub because it is the backbone of most open
  
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• YouTube live mobile video changes everything

  27-06-2016 13:02
  
  Google invented live-streaming video for the masses back in 2011.
  It was presented as a feature of Google+, but was really all about YouTube. Called Hangouts On Air, the idea was to live-stream video with up to 10 participants. Unlike regular Hangouts, Hangouts On Air could turn a video chat into a public performance. Hangouts On Air streams could be instantly shared, meaning that you could share it while the video was in progress. After the live stream ended, the video was posted on YouTube fo
  
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• Windows 10’s biggest controversies

  27-06-2016 12:38
  
  Since its release last July, the newest version of Windows has generally been considered a success, especially compared with its predecessor Windows 8/8.1. However, it hasn’t been all smooth sailing. Here are seven controversies that have been stirred up by Microsoft’s latest OS.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Which browser is best for battery life: We test Edge vs. Chrome vs. Opera vs. Firefox

  27-06-2016 12:00
  
  Lots of claims are made about which browser is better or worse for a device’s battery life. Can a browser really make that much of a difference? Yes indeed, but determining just how much of a difference and whether it even matters to your individual use case is the difficult part.I began testing the question of different web browsers’ impact on battery life about two months ago, and what I’ve concluded is that there’s a lot of work to be done here.What’s generally w
  
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• Real-world devops failures -- and how to avoid them

  27-06-2016 12:00
  
  Everything about devops sounds great. It's a practice that emphasizes collaboration and communication between software developers and other IT staffers and management, while automating tasks such as software delivery and infrastructure updates.
  With devops, the development, testing, and release of software can be accelerated and made more reliable, and that's vital for companies looking to survive in an ultracompetitive market.[ Download the Deep Dive: Monitoring in the age of devops. | Get a d
  
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• Mobile management vendors compared

  27-06-2016 12:00
  
  Enterprise mobility management (EMM) helps companies secure their mobile infrastructure, as well as control device policies and manage mobile apps, content, networks and services. The platforms have been around for a while; some might know them as mobile device management (MDM) suites. But those suites have matured and adopted new features.
  Editor's note: This chart was originally posted in May 2013 and was updated in March 2015 and again on June 30, 2016. We chose the vendors and products list
  
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• Mobile management takes on apps, content

  27-06-2016 12:00
  
  Corporate mobile infrastructures continue to grow, with both company-issued and employee-owned devices playing a key role in supporting business processes. Enterprise mobility management (EMM) suites are often the way enterprises manage these increasingly complex environments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Bold IT leadership is crucial, but difficult to find

  27-06-2016 11:37
  
  Bold leadership is essential for companies to achieve breakthrough performance, but according to the 2016 Deloitte Business Confidence Report, 90 percent of the 600 C-suite executives (CXOs) and C-suite executives-in-waiting (CXOWs) admit to not regularly demonstrating bold leadership.Deloitte uses six characteristics to assess bold leadership: someone who sets ambitious goals; invites feedback from colleagues at all levels of seniority; innovates and looks for new ways of doing things; proposes
  
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• BrandPost: The Democratization of Public Data and Analytics Tools

  27-06-2016 08:20
  In recent years, we’ve seen a quiet but steady movement to open up more datasets for use by researchers, local governments, product development teams, and just about anyone else. Today, this “open data” movement makes an enormous amount of data freely available.
  So what exactly is open data? The industry group Open Knowledge International offers this definition in its Open Data Handbook: “Open data is data that can be freely used, re-used and redistributed by anyone&mdas
  
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• Intel is said to mull selling its security business

  27-06-2016 04:51
  Intel is considering selling its security business as the company tries to focus on delivering chips for cloud computing and connected devices, according to a news report.The Intel Security business came largely from the company's acquisition for US$7.7 billion of security software company McAfee. Intel announced plans to bake some of the security technology into its chips to ensure higher security for its customers.With the surge in cyberthreats, providing protection to the variety of Internet-
  
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• Intel is said to mull sale of its security business

  27-06-2016 04:51
  Intel is considering selling its security business as the company tries to focus on delivering chips for cloud computing and connected devices, according to a news report.The Intel Security business came largely from the company's acquisition for US$7.7 billion of security software company McAfee. Intel announced plans to bake some of the security technology into its chips to ensure higher security for its customers.With the surge in cyberthreats, providing protection to the variety of Internet-
  
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