IT Executive news

• Verizon learned of massive Yahoo data breach just two days ago

  22-09-2016 23:01
  
  Verizon, which is finalizing its $4.8 billion purchase of Yahoo, said late Thursday it was notified of the massive data breach at Yahoo only in the last two days.
  Verizon said it would evaluate what it will do next. In an emailed statement, the company acknowledged that it now has only "limited information and understanding of the impact" of the hack.
  Yahoo earlier in the day blamed the attack on a "state-sponsored actor"without further elaboration and said its ongoing investigation indicates t
  
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• LinkedIn Learning puts Lynda.com to work

  22-09-2016 23:01
  
  SAN FRANCISCO — LinkedIn finally pulled the Lynda.com library of more than 9,000 online training courses into its main service and gave the content the prominence it's been lacking. The move comes nearly 18 months ago after the social network acquired the training site for $1.5 billion. LinkedIn Learning is now available to all of LinkedIn’s premium subscribers. The company also plans to make the service available to enterprises, so they can give their employees access to a variety o
  
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• Medical devices: Many benefits, but many insecurities

  22-09-2016 22:48
  
  In the world of medical device security, success comes down to having the capability to fail gracefully.
  This is not as oxymoronic as it might seem, Kevin Fu told an audience at the Security of Things Forum in Cambridge, Mass., on Thursday. What is more important than bulletproof security, he said, is the ability to contain or “localize” breaches or infections so they don’t disrupt the continuity of operations.
  Fu, CEO and cofounder of Virta Laboratories. whose opening keynote
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: The goal of big data: Making the unusual usual

  22-09-2016 22:46
  
  “Speak to Lana, she saw something like that last year,” or “Ask Louis to do it, he’s seen that a million times.” We’ve all heard similar phrases within business — phrases that are uttered when something unusual happens, linking people together to help them get more experience in order to solve the challenge of those unusual circumstances. Imagine an 18-year-old being thrown directly into Major League Baseball, facing the best pitcher in the league: Every
  
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• IBM shows how fast its brain-like chip can learn

  22-09-2016 22:44
  
  Developing a computer that can be as decisive and intelligent as humans is on IBM's mind, and it's making progress toward achieving that goal.IBM's computer chip called TrueNorth is designed to emulate the functions of a human brain. The company is now running tests and benchmarking TrueNorth to demonstrate how fast and power efficient the chips can be compared to today's computers.The results of the head-to-head contest are impressive. IBM says TrueNorth can engage in deep learning and make dec
  
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• The massive Yahoo hack ranks as the world's biggest -- so far

  22-09-2016 22:36
  
  When Yahoo said on Thursday that data from at least 500 million user accounts had been hacked, it wasn't just admitting to a huge failing in data security -- it was admitting to the biggest hack the world has ever seen.
  Until Thursday, the previous largest known hack was the 2008 breach that hit almost 360 million MySpace accounts, according to a ranking by the "Have I been pwned" website. Like the Yahoo breach, the hack was only publicly disclosed this year after data was offered on a hacker f
  
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• The so-called Universal Stylus Initiative launches without the three biggest players

  22-09-2016 22:07
  
  Anyone who’s toted around a recent Microsoft Surface device knows this: Styluses and digital pens tend to disappear. A new Universal Stylus Initiative, released today, aims to make their replacement as painless as possible. That's a nice idea, but the companies with the most pen-friendly products—Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung—have yet to sign on.
  The Universal Stylus Initiative (USI) establishes a cross-device specification for digital pens and styluses, including those found
  
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• Facebook, Twitter, YouTube get in on presidential debates

  22-09-2016 22:05
  
  Social media users won't just be taking to Twitter and Facebook to comment and gripe about the presidential debates this fall.
  They'll be able to watch the three debates between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton on live streams on three of the top social media players -- Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
  "This is unprecedented," said Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with ZK Research. "This lets people see [the debates] in different formats and more places. More importantly, the social
  
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• Google Fiber push advances in Nashville

  22-09-2016 21:19
  
  Google Fiber won a victory in Nashville as the city's Metro Council approved an ordinance called “One Touch Make Ready,” that would speed up the company's fiber-optic cable installations.
  The ordinance, passed Wednesday night by a voice vote, gives Google Fiber and other ISPs quicker access to utility poles for deploying fast broadband with fiber-optic cable.
  Without the measure, each ISP has had to send out a separate crew to a utility pole to move its own line to make room for a n
  
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• Yahoo data breach affects at least 500 million users

  22-09-2016 21:16
  
  A massive breach at Yahoo compromised account details from at least 500 million users, and the company is blaming the attack on state-sponsored hackers.Names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and hashed passwords may have been stolen as part of the hack, which occurred in late 2014, Yahoo said.The company reported the breach on Thursday, after a stolen database from the company went on sale on the black market last month.However, the hacker behind the sale claimed that the stolen databas
  
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• Homeland Security issues call to action on IoT security

  22-09-2016 21:15
  
  U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Robert Silvers says his purpose in speaking at the Security of Things Forum in Cambridge on Thursday wasn’t to scare anyone, but then he went ahead and called on everyone in the room to “accelerate everything you’re doing” to secure the internet of things. As the Assistant Secretary for Cyber Policy at DHS says, IoT security is a public safety issue that involves protecting both the nation’s physical and cyber infrastruc
  
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• Impending cumulative updates unnerve Windows patch experts

  22-09-2016 20:56
  
  Microsoft's decision to force Windows 10's patch and maintenance model on customers running the older-but-more-popular Windows 7 has patch experts nervous.
  "Bottom line, everyone is holding their breath, hoping for the best, expecting the worst," said Susan Bradley in an email. Bradley is well known in Windows circles for her expertise on Microsoft's patching processes: She writes on the topic for the Windows Secrets newsletter and moderates the PatchMangement.org mailing list, where business I
  
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• Site that leaked Colin Powell's emails dumps First Lady's passport

  22-09-2016 20:37
  
  The site that leaked Colin Powell's stolen emails has also allegedly obtained a scan of Michelle Obama's passport. On Thursday, the site DCLeaks began circulating the passport image on Twitter and leaking it to the press. The image includes the U.S. First Lady's alleged passport number. The site tweeted out the scan after obtaining stolen emails it claims are from a White House aide named Ian Mellul. The files, which are posted on DCLeaks, appear to come from Mellul's Gmail account and
  
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• Citigroup is cutting costs by making storage simpler

  22-09-2016 19:49
  
  Citigroup is using software-defined storage to build an infrastructure that could last 25 years – while generations of hardware come and go.The financial services company needs to transform its storage architecture to deal with growing and changing demands, says Dan Maslowski, global head of storage and engineered systems. By simplifying its architecture, Citigroup expects to slash its operational expenses, which make up most of its storage costs.Citigroup’s need for storage is growi
  
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• Microsoft emphasizes JavaScript tools, libraries in TypeScript 2.0

  22-09-2016 19:14
  
  Microsoft is now shipping TypeScript 2.0, an upgrade to the company's typed superset of JavaScript. It can be downloaded for Visual Studio 2015 Update 3, accessed by NuGet, used with with Visual Studio Code, or installed via NPM.
  Version 2.0 focuses on developer productivity, alignment with the ECMAscript standard underlying JavaScript, and support for JavaScript libraries and tools, the TypeScript team said.[ Use JavaScript in your dev shop? InfoWorld looks at 17 JavaScript editors and ID
  
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• 56% off Cambridge SoundWorks OontZ Angle 3XL Water Resistant Wireless Bluetooth Speaker - Deal Alert

  22-09-2016 19:11
  
  The OontZ Angle 3XL was designed and engineered by Cambridge SoundWorks to be their most powerful, best sounding speaker yet. Features a powerful 40 Watt AMP, delivering 20 Watts RMS loud enough to fill even large rooms with high quality sound. Perfect for parties, playing outdoors, at the pool and at the beach. Distortion-free even at maximum volume. IPX5 water resistance means it'll be OK with accidental splashes or rain. A built-in USB power bank can charge your iPhone or Smart
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Next generation of software engineers need training, not retraining

  22-09-2016 19:01
  
  Sylvain Kalache
  Developers working in an open space in San Francisco
  Boot camp watcher Course Report found that the typical coding boot camp attendee is 31 years old, has 7.6 years of work experience and has at least a bachelor's degree. These people have jobs, are already well down the higher education road and have decided that a career shift to the shiny tech industry is how they are going to change their world. Good for them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click he
  
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• CIOs must step into the digital leadership void

  22-09-2016 18:52
  
  Bask Iyer, CIO of VMware, once told me about the “CEO missing-out syndrome.” It goes like this:Most CEOs really like their CIOs. “My CIO is great,” they say. “She has kept costs down, has secured our enterprise, and runs a highly available infrastructure. In fact, she has done everything I have asked her to do since I hired her five years ago. However, I feel like I’m missing out. What with all of that innovation coming out of Silicon Valley,” these CEOs
  
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• Surface Pro 3 owners plagued by more battery problems

  22-09-2016 17:47
  
  History apparently repeats itself. In late August, Microsoft released an update for the Surface Pro 3 firmware designed to fix the battery problems plaguing some users. Now, yet more users are complaining about new battery issues that are just as crippling—and in some cases more so—than the original problem. On top of that, these newly affected users may very well be ones that weren’t affected by the first round of battery life woes.To read this article in full or to leave a c
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Why Accenture broke the blockchain with IBM's help

  22-09-2016 17:40
  
  You thought blockchains were distributed, public, time-stamped and persistent. Guess what? They still are.Private blockchains introduce a trusted intermediary
  Accenture is suggesting that permissioned blockchains will benefit from the ability to change transactions — perform “do-overs.” A permissioned blockchain is a network where the participants can restrict who can participate in the consensus mechanism of the blockchain’s network. A network wh
  
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• 60% off HDMI 2.0 High Speed 4k-Ready Gold Plated 6ft Cable - Deal Alert

  22-09-2016 17:39
  
  If you're looking for cables that can keep up with the high demands of today's video tech, you may want to consider this cable from SecurOMax, currently discounted 60%. This heavy duty, high quality 6ft HDMI 2.0 cable will drive full 4K 60hz 2160P. Something that older HDMI cables just can't pull off. It features more expensive, thicker 28 AWG wiring which enables 18 GBPS speed required for all HDMI 2.0 features. Its connectors are 24K gold-plated, with soldering points covered by a thick a
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Learn how to deploy OpenStack for free

  22-09-2016 17:08
  
  The Linux Foundation is collaborating with edX to offer an online course titled, LFS152x. The course spans across seven chapters, with a quiz at the end of each chapter. Students must take a final exam in order to complete the course. The complete course is available free of cost. Students can obtain a verified certificate of completion for $99.Challenges for OpenStackOpenStack may be ruling the private cloud but it’s not very easy to get started with OpenStack. In fact, a survey sponsore
  
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• Yahoo reportedly to confirm massive data breach

  22-09-2016 17:03
  
  Following reports that Yahoo will confirm a data breach that affects hundreds of millions of accounts, some users reported Thursday on Twitter and elsewhere that they were prompted to change their email password when trying to log in.Yahoo launched an investigation into a possible breach in early August after someone offered to sell a data dump of over 200 million Yahoo accounts on an underground market, including usernames, easy-to-crack password hashes, dates of birth and backup email add
  
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• Vijf maatregelen om je te beschermen tegen DDoS

  22-09-2016 16:52
  Door Kristian de Bruijn – In het eerste kwartaal is het aantal DDoS-aanvallen met meer dan 50% toegenomen ten opzichte van dat kwartaal in 2015. Onlangs is het razend populaire spel Pokémon Go nog getroffen door een DDoS-aanval. De hackers die hierachter zitten, hebben zelfs gedreigd met een nieuw... lees meer
  
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• Banks turn to AI for improved customer service, competitive edge

  22-09-2016 15:45
  
  With the Wells Fargo fake accounts scandal fresh on your mind, it’s hard to feel sorry for banks these days. But the pressure on big banks to innovate has never been higher.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Plan now for the EU's privacy regulation revolution, says HPE exec

  22-09-2016 15:01
  
  The cost of complying with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation might seem like something best deferred until it enters force in 2018 -- but working on compliance just might boost profit, not reduce it.The GDPR, the EU's latest rewrite of its data privacy laws, doesn't enter effect until May 25, 2018, but already IT companies are talking up their software and services for complying with the new rules.It's not just an issue for EU enterprises: Any company processing the persona
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Innovation advice for CIOs and other leaders

  22-09-2016 15:00
  
  The Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, the research division of Deloitte LLP’s life sciences and healthcare practice, conducted a survey of leaders across healthcare systems recently to identify the top 10 innovations that could potentially transform healthcare. Once the survey was complete, they narrowed the list down by applying the following definition of innovation:
  Any combination of activities or technologies that break existing performance tradeoffs in the attainment of an outcom
  
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• The U.S. airports with the best (and worst) cellular networks

  22-09-2016 14:36
  
  If you're traveling on business or going on vacation with the family, chances are you'll use mobile devices at the airport. You're out of luck, however, if you have a long layover in Los Angeles, Miami or Austin. The super-busy airports in these three cities have terrible cellular connectivity, across all wireless carriers, according to a new report.Oakland, Calif., however — a city that's often overshadowed by its more glamorous cousin across San Francisco Bay — has by far the
  
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• Does Oracle have a shot in the public cloud vs. Amazon and Microsoft?

  22-09-2016 14:35
  
  Larry Ellison has voiced fighting words at Oracle’s OpenWorld conference this week, announcing that Amazon Web Services’ lead in the IaaS market is over and that AWS will have “serious competition going forward.”
  But does Oracle actually have a shot versus AWS and the company many see as the second place vendor, Microsoft?
  “It depends,” says Gartner distinguished analyst Lydia Leong, author of the annual Magic Quadrant benchmark report for the public Infrastr
  
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• 6 tips for managing a global workforce

  22-09-2016 14:19
  
  Technology has drastically changed the role of management in the enterprise, as teams, and even entire companies, grow more disperse. In fact, it's not out of the realm of possibility that you could eventually work for a company with an entirely remote workforce.While technology has brought plenty of positives to the corporate world, it's also made managers' jobs more difficult. How do you effectively measure engagement and performance if you have a team of workers sprinkled across the country o
  
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• Silicon Valley needs to be the change

  22-09-2016 14:08
  
  Remember when PayPal canceled its proposed North Carolina facility in response to that state's governor's anti-LGBTQ bills earlier this year? Remember how hard lobbyists worked to make sure AirBnB's room-sharing service could function?The industry has plenty of money, influence and smarts to effect social change, and it doesn't hesitate to use it when its best interests are at stake. The industry's certainly making noise about its lack of diversity and many Silicon Valley heavyweights are active
  
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• Were Apple's 'leaked' iPhone 7 tweets really a mistake?

  22-09-2016 14:00
  
  Apple hasn't embraced social media the way its tech rivals have, but the company appears to have warmed to the medium. Today Apple uses its @AppleSupport account on Twitter as a customer service and outreach tool, and the company also maintains Twitter accounts for some of its most popular services, including Apple Music, the App Store, iTunes and Beats1. Apple also finally started to use its main @Apple Twitter account in the days leading up to the iPhone 7 launch earlier this month. But t
  
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• Sneak peek: 15 gadgets to put on your holiday wish list

  22-09-2016 14:00
  
  Start making the list and checking it twiceThe calendar may say it’s the beginning of fall, but that won’t prevent us from giving you a sneak peek at some of the hottest devices and gadgets that will top your holiday wish list. Here’s a bunch of cool stuff that we’re hoping to get our hands on to present in our 17th annual Cool Yule Tools holiday gift guide (coming Nov. 14). Keep in mind that these devices are not yet reviewed, so we’re not giving these our official
  
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• As migration anniversary approaches, only a third of retailers accept chip cards

  22-09-2016 14:00
  
  Retailers were supposed to start accepting chip cards last October, but a year past the start of the EMV liability shift, two-thirds still haven't done so.
  Only 2 million merchants, representing 33 percent of the industry, are actively accepting chip cards, according to a data released by MasterCard earlier this month. This is up from 1.4 million in June.
  The rest are liable for in-person payment fraud. Before last October, merchants were not liable for fraudulent purchases at physical location
  
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• A Cisco-Salesforce deal means collaboration will come to you

  22-09-2016 14:00
  
  The hardest thing about adopting an enterprise collaboration platform can be adoption itself – getting employees to actually start up the new software and then turn to it whenever they need to communicate.Putting the software inside something that workers already use is one way to drive adoption and also make the communication tools more valuable. Cisco Systems knows this, and on Thursday the company announced a strategic alliance with Salesforce, its second big partnership in that directi
  
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• Google needs solid win with release of smart Allo app

  22-09-2016 13:35
  
  Four months ago, Google executives said the company had a new, laser focus on artificial intelligence.
  On Tuesday, the company launched Allo, a smart messaging app for Android and iOS platforms that uses A.I. to help users express themselves, accomplish more and find more information within their chats. The app was originally unveiled at Google'sI/O developer conference in May.
  It's part of a new waveof A.I.-powered technologies, smart products and services that Google hopes to keeps the compan
  
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• Nixon Mission review: A hardcore Android Wear watch for surf and snow

  22-09-2016 13:00
  
  Ruggedized for action sports, the Nixon Mission is water resistant down to 10 ATM thanks to a trick "MicLock" feature.
  
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• Investigating Cybersecurity Incidents — a free course

  22-09-2016 12:44
  
  One of the biggest mistakes companies make when responding to a cybersecurity incident is taking well-meaning steps to “clean up the mess” that actually ruin the digital evidence needed to investigate and prosecute the case.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
  
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• Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga review: This 2-in-1's OLED screen will color your computing world

  22-09-2016 12:30
  
  With an OLED display and an NVMe SSD, the Lenovo X1 Yoga delivers rich colors and top-notch performance.
  
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• Security is no fiction: Infosec on TV, film—and in space

  22-09-2016 12:17
  
  Where no password has gone before Image by Paramount PicturesI predate the modern tech age by just enough that the first time I saw a computer password was on-screen: In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Admiral Kirk staves off disaster by using a five-digit numeric code to hack into the stolen USS Reliant's computer, ordering it to lower its shields. The idea that a powerful warship's central control computer could be accessed with just a five-number password seems laughable today—though n
  
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• Lockdown! Harden Windows 10 for maximum security

  22-09-2016 12:00
  
  You may have heard that Microsoft has made Windows 10 more secure than any of its predecessors, packing it with security goodies. What you might not know is that some of these vaunted security features aren’t available out of the box or they require additional hardware -- you may not be getting the level of security you bargained for.
  Features such as Credential Guard are available for only certain editions of Windows 10, while the advanced biometrics promised by Windows Hello require a h
  
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• Hands-on: Google Assistant's Allo chatbot outdoes Cortana, Siri as your digital pal

  22-09-2016 12:00
  
  Tucked within Google’s unremarkable Allo messaging app is a real treasure: Google Assistant, which injects Google Now with an eager-to-please personality that finally provides the give-and-take other digital assistants lack.
  We’ve always talked about Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Google Now as the three digital assistants from the top smartphone platforms. But the truth is that Google Now was little more than a series of informative cards, while Siri and Cortana
  
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