IT Executive news

• Verizon signals Yahoo data breach may affect acqusition

  13-10-2016 23:11
  
  Verizon has signaled that Yahoo's massive data breach may be enough reason to halt its US$4.8 billion deal to buy the internet company.On Thursday, Verizon's general counsel Craig Silliman said the company has a "reasonable basis" to believe that the breach involving 500 million Yahoo accounts has had a material impact on the acquisition. This could give the company room to back out or get a large discount."We're looking to Yahoo to demonstrate to us the full impact," he added. "If they believe
  
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• Autonomous delivery bots will soon stroll the streets of Washington D.C.

  13-10-2016 23:02
  
  Some Washington, D.C., residents may soon be sharing the streets with Starship Technologies' delivery robots.Back in June, Washington became the first U.S. city to approve a pilot program of the ground-based delivery robots. Among some restrictions, the D.C. Council bill specifies that PPDs, or personal delivery devices, must not operate above 10 miles per hour, must weigh less than 50 pounds without cargo, and must obey all traffic and pedestrian signs and signals. 
  Starship Technolog
  
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• 46% off Earth Pak Waterproof Dry Bag Compression Sack - Deal Alert

  13-10-2016 22:34
  
  Whether you are Kayaking, Beaching, Rafting, Boating, Hiking, Camping or Fishing, Earth Pak believes they have created the best dry bag on the market for any adventure. Toss in your gear, roll it down, and don't be afraid to toss this bag around. It's designed to last for years and will keep your phone, gadgets and gear dry and protected. It comes in 10L, 20L and 30L size, and all models feature 24-42 inch adjustable shoulder straps. Included is Earth Pak's IPX8 certified waterproof ph
  
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• Sprint to get into managed SD-WAN game with VeloCloud-based offering

  13-10-2016 22:07
  
  Sprint today said it would get into the managed SD-WAN arena in early 2017 with an offering using VeloCloud’s technology.
  +More on Network World: Branch office links, big bandwidth needs drive SD-WAN evolution+
  Sprint said it is currently teaming with VeloCloud to support customer trials for its SD-WAN service during the fourth quarter of 2016, with a global launch planned for early 2017.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• 40% off Sound Intone P6 Stereo Bluetooth Over-ear Foldable Headphones - Deal Alert

  13-10-2016 21:34
  
  These headphones from Sound Intone fit comfortably over your ears and isolate your music while reducing outside noise. They connect via Bluetooth, and feature a generous 6 hour play time per charge. They fold up nicely when not in use and feature a scratch-resistant coating, making them ideal to take with you when travelling. Control your music right from the headset with play/pause/next/previous buttons. And a built-in microphone comes in handy for taking calls. That's a pretty full set of feat
  
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• Some reports of faulty Note7s invalidated

  13-10-2016 20:38
  
  Some of the early reports on faulty Samsung Galaxy Note7 smartphones that caused burns and property damage have been invalidated, significantly reducing the number of incidents.[ Related: Timeline of Samsung's disastrous Galaxy Note7 debacle]Data released today by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) shows that Samsung had received 13 reports of burns and 47 reports of property damage in the U.S. since Note7s went on sale in August. By comparison, a CPSC report from Sept. 15 showed
  
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• Thousands of online shops compromised for credit card theft

  13-10-2016 20:17
  
  Almost 6,000 online shops have been compromised by hackers who added specially crafted code that intercepts and steals payment card details.These online skimming attacks were first discovered by Dutch researcher Willem de Groot a year ago. At that time, he found 3,501 stores containing the malicious JavaScript code. However, instead of getting better, the situation is increasingly worse.By March the number of infected shops grew by almost 30 percent to 4,476, and by September, it reached 5,
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: 6 steps to rescue a problem client

  13-10-2016 20:00
  
  Early in my IT manager career I discovered a valuable lesson that has helped me immensely ever since. The story goes like this:In a senior IT manager role, my team of some 100 technical resources supported the business applications developed by our company for just over 100 hospitals throughout the U.S. My five regional IT support organizations also provided customized programming services and training for our hospital clients.I received a call from our West Region support manager one day and sh
  
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• iOS 10's one-month adoption rate hits 68%

  13-10-2016 19:49
  
  iOS 10 adoption continued to climb a month after its release, with some sources pegging the upgrade on more than two-thirds of iPhones.
  At the one-month mark, iOS 10 accounted for 68.2% of all iOS editions detected by Mixpanel, whose analytics platform is used by mobile app developers to track usage and user engagement.
  That was slightly higher than the 62.8% accumulated by iOS 9 last year at the same post-release point, and far above iOS 8's 48.9% in September 2014.
  The modern record for iOS u
  
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• Azure roundup: FPGAs, new VMs and fresh Europe regions

  13-10-2016 19:10
  
  Microsoft's big Ignite conference for IT pros wrapped up at the end of September, and that means the company dumped a ton of new cloud capabilities to attract people to Azure. Here's the run-down on all the major news you need to know about:Azure data centers in Germany and the UK go live
  In its continuing quest to expand the global reach of its public cloud platform, Microsoft announced the general availability of four new Azure regions: two in the U.K. and two in Germany. The UK data centers a
  
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• Backdoor dubbed Pork Explosion lets attackers go hog wild on Android phones

  13-10-2016 18:53
  
  A backdoor in Android firmware provided by manufacturer Foxconn allows attackers to root devices to which they have physical access, according to a security researcher and barbecue enthusiast who dubbed the vulnerability Pork Explosion.
  Jon Sawyer (who also goes by jcase online) discovered the vulnerability at the end of August, and publicized it on his blog on Wednesday, a day after smartphone vendor Nextbit, which was one of the most heavily affected OEMs, released a fix for the problem.
  +ALS
  
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• White House releases money for small-satellite broadband, smart cities

  13-10-2016 18:41
  
  The U.S. government will invest tens of millions of dollars in smart-city technologies and in small-satellite broadband as part of a US$300 million package focused on innovation.The package of new investments, announced Thursday, will include $65 million in government funding and $100 million in private funding for smart cities technologies. Two new government grant programs will focus on easing traffic congestion and on creating new on-demand mobility services, including smartphone-enabled car
  
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• The OPM breach report: A long time coming

  13-10-2016 17:01
  
  If you want to have even a chance of defeating cyber attacks, you have to be quick.
  So, in hindsight, there is no mystery why the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was a loser to attackers who exfiltrated personal data – including in many cases detailed security clearance information and fingerprint data – of more than 22 million current and former federal employees.
  Hackers, said to be from China, were inside the OPM system starting in 2012, but were n
  
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• Job seekers: Celebrate who you are

  13-10-2016 16:25
  
  A few weeks ago, a colleague sent me a link to this article from the Wall Street Journal, in which John Greathouse opined that women in tech should appear 'neutral' (read: male) in their online presence to avoid discrimination.
  Rightfully, Twitter went bananas, he was deluged with Tweets and (I assume) emails, and a number of women blogged about the issue, telling him exactly how and why he was wrong. He then issued an apology.He's certainly wrong, but I'll give him a tiny bit of slack for his c
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: What level of education do you need for a successful marketing career?

  13-10-2016 16:15
  
  Online marketing is becoming an ever-increasing chunk of business, and the specialty of marketing in particular has exploded with demand for dedicated digital marketers. This is one career that promises long-term employment, solid benefits, and exciting opportunities for personal growth.But most marketers aren’t going to make it big in the field without a solid education. Marketing manager or a related position is a high-paying job that can offer exciting daily opportunities.The media
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: The healthcare intelligence revolution: supply-chain management for healthcare

  13-10-2016 16:12
  
  Intelligent supply chains will be a game-changer for healthcare. Big data analytics are transforming care delivery. The U.S. healthcare landscape is shifting and causing providers to revisit their care delivery models. Fee-for-value instead of fee-for-service, physician shortages, digitization of healthcare and shifts toward outpatient services are challenging conventional care models. Care providers must utilize data to create information and information to create intelligence, and then us
  
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• 11% off 1byone Halloween Fog Machine, 1200W High Output - Deal Alert

  13-10-2016 16:08
  
  Step your Halloween game up with this powerful but lightweight 1200W fog machine that pumps out 3,500 cubic feet of creepy fog per minute. That's enough thick fog to easily fill a garage, a pathway, or a porch, but the output density is adjustable with multiple settings. It averages 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 600 people (read reviews). Its typical list price of $92.99 has been reduced 11% to $82.99 (see it on Amazon). If you just don't need that much fog, 1byone has a 400W model that i
  
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• Twitter tests replacing Moments with a more useful Explore tab

  13-10-2016 16:05
  
  Twitter may soon replace the most-ignored tab on its mobile app with something else. The social network is testing a replacement for the Moments tab on Android and iOS with a new tab called Explore. Twitter’s new tab contains still contains Moments, as well as trending topics (including hashtags) and search terms, as first reported by Mashable.
  For now this test is just a trial with a subset of users, and it’s the sort of test that social networks do all the time—meaning
  
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• Cisco patches critical authentication flaw in conferencing servers

  13-10-2016 15:45
  
  Cisco Systems has patched a critical vulnerability that could allow hackers to gain access to Cisco Meeting and Acano servers that are used in enterprise environments for video and audio conferencing.The flaw allows an unauthenticated attacker to masquerade as a legitimate user because the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) service incorrectly processes a deprecated authentication scheme, Cisco said in an advisory.The flaw affects Cisco Meeting Server versions prior to 2.0.6 with
  
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• What is MANRS and does your network have it?

  13-10-2016 15:41
  
  While the internet itself was first envisioned as a way of enabling robust, fault-tolerant communication, the global routing infrastructure that underlies it is relatively fragile. A simple error like the misconfiguration of routing information in one of the 7,000 to 10,000 networks central to global routing can lead to a widespread outage, and deliberate actions, like preventing traffic with spoofed source IP addresses, can lead to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.The Internet Socie
  
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• Do you need a digital brand manager?

  13-10-2016 14:21
  
  As organizations come to grips with the need for digital transformation, a new role is emerging to help these companies remold their brand image for maximum impact, reach and influence in a digital age.
  A digital brand manager is tasked with driving growth and awareness across a company's product lines by converting traditional, physical brand management, awareness and marketing to digital consumer and customer experiences, says Victor Janulaitis, CEO of management consultancy Janco Associates.
  
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• Future of collaboration software all about integration — not consolidation

  13-10-2016 14:00
  
  Enterprise software makers have tried to blend social tools and consumer technology for at least a decade. It's been a slow process, but by 2020 the biggest names in business software will likely be well-known consumer brands, instead of the stalwarts that dominated the market for decades, according to Aaron Levie, CEO of cloud storage service Box. Outsiders are redefining the future of workplace collaboration, and some of these companies, including Facebook, are focused on specific tools o
  
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• 7 things marketing pros need to know about chatbots

  13-10-2016 14:00
  
  Earlier this year, chatbots were barely a blip on the tech world's radar. Then, at Facebook's F8 developer conference in April, the company announced that its Messenger app would soon feature chatbots from brands including CNN and 1-800-Flowers. Seemingly overnight, chatbots became the "next big thing" in tech and the object of endless media coverage. Other messaging platforms, such as Kik, Line and Telegram, are also experimenting with chatbots developed by third-party companies. And Talkabot,
  
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• Yahoo shows that breach impacts can go far beyond remediation expenses

  13-10-2016 13:46
  
  Companies that focus on the immediate breach remediation costs may be missing the big picture, and could be under-investing in security as a result.
  Several studies have come out recently trying to get a handle on the total costs of a data breach, with a large variation in costs - from less than $1 million on average, to $6 million - based on the data sets and types of included costs.
  But the actual numbers could be several times higher.
  Take the Yahoo breach, for example, which could lead to a
  
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• IT workers aren’t cogs in a machine

  13-10-2016 13:29
  
  Are you part of a team that seems plodding, downtrodden or dejected? Do you manage a group prone to infighting among individuals or conflict between factions? Do you go to work every day filled with dread that you’ll be surrounded by people exuding negative emotions? If so, you’re not alone. Unfortunately, this describes far too many IT groups and project teams.
  In my work helping both troubled and toxic teams, I’ve noticed that there are innumerable ways in which teams descen
  
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• Hardcore fans mourn the death of Nexus by denouncing the Pixel

  13-10-2016 13:00
  
  It seems Google would like people to think the Pixel is the first phone it has ever produced with its “Made by Google” ad campaign. The most devoted fans of the Android platform have never seen it that way. To them, the Nexus phones were about “pure Android,” but now they’re suddenly finding their phones have been demoted.
  Google has said there will be no new Nexus phones, and what's more, the Pixel and Pixel XL will get exclusive features that aren’t coming
  
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• Grey hats and blue skies, dealing with airline security

  13-10-2016 12:34
  
  Since Sept. 11, 2001, the airline industry has been one of the fastest industries to upgrade their security procedures and protocols against various threats, both present and perceived.
  Threats from possible terrorist bombs and improvised explosive devices have been curbed, and not one American plane has been hijacked since the tragic events of that fateful day.
  However, hackers don't need to board an airplane to gain control of the systems set in place to control it.
  Though cybersecurity breac
  
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• Why you need to create a social media policy

  13-10-2016 12:21
  
  Whether it's Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat or Reddit, chances are good that your employees are spending some time on at least one of these social networks during work hours. But before you run to IT and install company-wide web filters, there are a few things to consider about your employee's social media habits."Social media is more accessible than ever -- and it isn't going anywhere anytime soon -- so it's a great time for employers to get on board. If a company has a clear policy aro
  
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• Darkweb marketplaces can get you more than just spam and phish

  13-10-2016 12:04
  
  The underground marketImage by ThinkstockUnderground markets offer a great variety of services for cyber criminals to profit from. These forums offer items ranging from physical world items like drugs and weapons to digital world items such as spam/phishing delivery, exploit kit services, "Crypters", "Binders", custom malware development, zero-day exploits, and bulletproof hosting.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Michael Dell tells IT leaders all they need to know about the new Dell Technologies

  13-10-2016 12:01
  
  In September, Dell and EMC finalized the largest ever merger of tech companies, creating privately held Dell Technologies - a "family" of companies that provides everything from PCs to hyperconverged infrastructure with annual revenue of some $75 billion. Ahead of next week's Dell EMC World conference, CEO Michael Dell spoke with IDG Chief Content Officer John Gallant about what Dell and EMC customers can expect -- in sales, service, product integration -- from this landscape-altering combinati
  
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• Why you should try Linux today: 6 compelling reasons

  13-10-2016 12:00
  There’s never been a better time to give Linux a try.
  Wait, don’t slam on that back button! I’m not one of those rabid “Year of the Linux desktop” types. Windows works just fine for hundreds of millions of people, and—sorry, Linux lovers—there’s little to suggest Linux usage will ever be more than a rounding error compared to Microsoft’s behemoth.
  That said, there are some pretty compelling reasons you might want to consider switching to Lin
  
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• GitHub's 7 top productivity tools for programmers

  13-10-2016 12:00
  
  GitHub's 7 most popular productivity tools for programmersImage by Wikipedia; pixabayBorn of ingenuity -- or, in some cases, laziness -- programming tools created by developers for developers have become an essential component of modern software development. Developers seeking to enhance their productivity or simply cut down on keystrokes have enjoyed a boon of possibilities thanks to open source repo host GitHub.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Samsung hikes recall incentives to retain Note7 customers

  13-10-2016 11:41
  
  In a bid to retain customers, Samsung Electronics is giving larger financial incentives to people who choose to exchange the ill-fated Galaxy Note7 for another smartphone from the company, rather than seek a refund.In the U.S., the company is giving customers a US$25 bill credit through carriers and retailers to customers who return a Note7 for a refund or for any other branded smartphone. But if they choose to exchange the Note7 for any Samsung smartphone, they will get a whopping $100 bill cre
  
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• IBM's Cleversafe storage platform is becoming a cloud service

  13-10-2016 06:05
  
  If dispersing data among storage nodes can make it more secure and less prone to loss, wouldn’t spreading it across far-flung cloud data centers make it even more so?If so, IBM has the right idea with its Cloud Object Storage service, which uses SecureSlice object storage technology that it acquired by buying Cleversafe last year.The storage-as-a-service offering becomes generally available on Thursday. It lets enterprises use both on-premises gear and the IBM Cloud to store unstructured d
  
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