IT Executive news

• AT&T trials open switches for better future services

  04-04-2017 23:55
  
  A coast-to-coast network trial by AT&T last month, using open-source "white box" switches, pointed toward an imagined future of more reliable services that may come quicker than some people think.The carrier ran a trial on its core network earlier this year using switches based on chips from Intel, Broadcom and startup Barefoot Networks. The latter only started shipping in sample quantities in December, making the trial deployment a remarkably quick turnaround.Like other carriers and cloud p
  
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• After Congress revokes Internet privacy rules, downloads double of VPN-equipped Opera browser

  04-04-2017 23:21
  
  Opera Software today boasted that the number of new U.S. users of its namesake browser more than doubled days after Congress voted to repeal restrictions on broadband providers eager to sell customers' surfing history.Opera debuted a VPN -- virtual private network -- a year ago, and finalized the feature in September. A VPN disguises the actual IP address of the user, effectively anonymizing the browsing, and encrypts the data transmitted to and from sites, creating a secure "tunnel" to the dest
  
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• 58% off LOOP Worldwide Travel Adapter with Dual USB Charging Ports - Deal Alert

  04-04-2017 23:15
  
  Power and charge in over 150 Countries with US UK EU & AUS/CHINA Plugs. This adapter works in Canada, Russia, Asia, Central America, South America and the Middle East to name a few. Dual USB charging ports for simultaneously charging your USB devices as well. A 6-amp fuse (and built-in spare fuse) is included, as well as an 18-month warranty. LOOP's travel adapter averages 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 580 people (read reviews). It's $39.95 list price has been reduced a generous 58% t
  
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• Chinese hackers go after third-party IT suppliers to steal data

  04-04-2017 22:39
  
  Companies that choose to outsource their IT operations should be careful. Suspected Chinese hackers have been hitting businesses by breaching their third-party IT service providers. Major IT suppliers that specialize in cloud storage, help desk, and application management have become a top target for the hacking group known as APT10, security providers BAE Systems and PwC said in a joint report.That's because these suppliers often have direct access to their client's networks. APT10 has bee
  
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• Trump's H-1B reform may go the way of healthcare

  04-04-2017 22:38
  
  President Donald Trump may have no more luck reforming the H-1B visa than he did with healthcare. If he relies on the GOP alone for support, he may fail.Trump, who repeatedly criticized the H-1B program during his campaign, faces sharp divisions in his own party over the visa program.U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) plan to re-introduce new versions of old bills that raise the visa cap.These lawmakers appear willing to meet Trump at least part of the way on vi
  
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• Good-bye Internet pioneers. Hello, Oath?

  04-04-2017 22:27
  
  After its acquisition of Yahoo wraps up, Verizon plans to place AOL and Yahoo under the umbrella of a new company, called Oath.AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong on Monday announced the move on Twitter, writing, "Billion+ Consumers, 20+ Brands, Unstoppable Team. #TakeTheOath. Summer 2017."AOL, which owns the Huffington Post, Engadget and TechCrunch, will pool all of the properties with Yahoo under the Oath umbrella, according to Armstrong, in an interview with CNBC."This is a sad thing for everyo
  
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• What users could expect from Apple's homegrown GPUs for iPhones, iPads

  04-04-2017 22:16
  
  Apple has one big reason to move to a homegrown GPU: It wants full control over the hardware and software in its devices.The device maker is apparently developing its own GPU from scratch after dumping Imagination Technologies' PowerVR architecture, which is being used in the iPhone 7. The smartphone runs on the PowerVR A10 Fusion chip.It's not certain when Apple's homegrown GPU will appear in devices, and the company didn't respond to request for comment.Apple has made graphics improvement a pr
  
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• Windows 10 powers 9% of business PCs

  04-04-2017 22:04
  
  Microsoft Windows 10 powered about 9% of all business personal computers a year and a half after its launch, a just-released study of corporate deployments said.According to Austin, Texas-based Spiceworks, an online community and resource for IT professionals and the vendors trying to reach them, the proportion of company-deployed PCs running Windows 10 was almost double that of its predecessor, Windows 8, which powered 5% of all enterprise desktop and laptop systems.[ Related: Fix Windows 10 pr
  
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• IT leaders share how they quell cybersecurity attacks

  04-04-2017 21:53
  
  Ask CIOs and CISOs what cybersecurity fears keep them up at night and you’ll hear a range of responses -- from social engineering hacks such as phishing, as well as malware that enables perpetrators to hijack users' websites -- the dreaded ransomware -- and denial-of-service attacks. Depending on their business you might hear them say "all of the above."These threats are driving increased spending on cybersecurity tools intended to protect corporate data from nation-state actors, lone wolf
  
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• How Snap is caving in to post-IPO pressures

  04-04-2017 21:49
  
  Snap, the makers of Snapchat, has faced at least some of the pressures that come with being a publicly traded company for a full month now and it’s already showing signs of change. On Friday, the company enabled a new search function that allows you to search through public posts, or Stories. In its pursuit of more eyeballs and longer sessions in the app, Snap is evolving and embracing features that run counter to its traditional user experience and more closely mirror those of its competi
  
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• Apple to refund recent Workflow purchases after making the app free

  04-04-2017 21:45
  
  If you snagged the popular iOS automation app Workflow juuuuust before Apple bought it and then made it a free service, don’t worry: Apple is gonna give you that $2.99 back. Plus tax.According to 9to5Mac, Apple is emailing iTunes customers who recently purchased Workflow to let them know that the app is now free and that refunds are imminent.It’s unclear exactly what the purchase window is for refunds, although 9to5Mac reported one Twitter user had bought his version “some week
  
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• Coal plummets to 1978 levels as renewables climb

  04-04-2017 21:43
  
  A dramatic, double-digit decrease in coal production led to an overall 4% drop in U.S. primary energy creation in 2016, according to a new report.This marked the first annual decline in U.S. energy production since 2009, according to the report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.The decline in production coincided with an increase in both total energy imports and exports. U.S. fossil fuel production fell 7% from 2015 to 2016, with coal dropping 18% -- to its lowest point since 1978.
  
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• It's not the end of SPARC chips yet

  04-04-2017 21:41
  
  Fujitsu is helping to keep SPARC from extinction as it continues to design and develop the architecture. The company has introduced two Unix servers -- the M12-2S and the M12-2 -- using SPARC chips based on a new CPU architecture.The M12 servers are about 2.5 times faster than their predecessor, the M10, which used the older SPARC X chips.Oracle and partner Fujitsu are the only companies using the SPARC architecture, and share a healthy partnership. Devotees of SPARC feared the architecture was
  
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• Delphix CEO: We're having a ‘massive impact’ on the world’s best brands

  04-04-2017 21:04
  
  When Chris Cook was considering taking the job of Delphix CEO, the company was described to him as 'the best kept secret' in the tech industry. Cook, who's been CEO for a year now, will tell you that's not a good thing and he's working hard to change it. Is one of the things that holds Delphix back is that the market for your product is not easily defined? Is there an easy two- or three- or four-word phrase for what you do? To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(In
  
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• Apple fixes wireless-based remote code execution flaw in iOS

  04-04-2017 20:56
  
  Apple released an iOS update Monday to fix a serious vulnerability that could allow attackers to remotely execute malicious code on the Broadcom Wi-Fi chips used in iPhones, iPads, and iPods.The vulnerability is a stack buffer overflow in the feature that handles authentication responses for the fast BSS transition feature of the 802.11r protocol, also known as fast roaming. This feature allows devices to move easily and securely between different wireless base stations in the same domain.Hacker
  
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• 37% off LifeStraw Personal Water Filter - Deal Alert

  04-04-2017 19:28
  
  Having a LifeStraw Personal Water Filter at hand provides access to clean, safe drinking water whenever needed.  Weighing only 2 oz. (54g), LifeStraw is the perfect water filter for hiking and camping. LifeStraw uses advanced 0.2 micron hollow fiber membrane technology.  This highly efficient method of filtration requires no chemicals, batteries, or moving parts and can be easily backflushed to clean the filter. Perfect for a vehicle or home emergency kit.  The LifeStraw aver
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Android leads in worldwide internet usage

  04-04-2017 19:19
  
  We had this joke: 'total world domination was our goal.' Everybody laughed at us. Then we did it and nobody even noticed. I mean, we're everywhere. We're going places that Linux has never been. It's crazy to think that this project we all started working on for fun, myself included, has done this. It's insane. — Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-HartmanThe fact is, Linux has come to dominate personal computing, even while failing to dominate personal computers. (Although Linus Torvald
  
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• Politicians' web browsing history targeted after privacy vote

  04-04-2017 19:17
  
  Two GoFundMe campaigns have raised more than US$290,000 in an effort to buy the web browsing histories of U.S. politicians after Congress voted to allow broadband providers to sell customers' personal information without their permission.It's unclear if those efforts will succeed, however. Even though Congress scrapped the FCC's ISP privacy rules last week, the Telecommunications Act still prohibits telecom providers from selling personally identifiable information in many cases.&
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Apple spills the beans about a new Mac Pro, iMac Pro and pro displays

  04-04-2017 18:54
  
  These have been grim days for fans of the Mac, Apple has not updated the Mac Pro in almost four years. The Mac mini has also languished for almost three years, while the iMac hasn’t been updated in almost two years.But all that might be about to change, according to a report on the popular Apple blog Daring Fireball:
  Apple is currently hard at work on a “completely rethought” Mac Pro, with a modular design that can accommodate high-end CPUs and big honking hot-running GPUs, and
  
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• A free decryption tool is now available for all Bart ransomware versions

  04-04-2017 18:36
  
  Users who have had their files encrypted by any version of the Bart ransomware program are in luck: Antivirus vendor Bitdefender has just released a free decryption tool.The Bart ransomware appeared back in June and stood out because it locked victims' files inside ZIP archives encrypted with AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). Unlike other ransomware programs that used RSA public-key cryptography and relied on a command-and-control server to generate key pairs, Bart was able to encrypt files ev
  
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• Privacy rollback can cause headaches for corporate security pros

  04-04-2017 18:32
  
  Corporate security pros can add a new task to their busy days: handling panicky employees worried about privacy who are using the onion router (Tor) browser as a way to protect their online activity.That practice translates into additional security alerts that require time-consuming manual sorting to determine whether the persons behind Tor sessions are friend or foe, says George Gerchow, vice president of security and compliance at Sumo Logic.Ever since congressional action started a few w
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Good analytics governance isn't about better information

  04-04-2017 17:08
  
  About enterprising analytics
  To be "enterprising" is to be eager to undertake or prompt to attempt. To show initiative and be resourceful. These are leadership traits, so to be enterprising is to lead. "Analytics" is how we use data to inform decision making, in the context of achieving business objectives. These are management practices, so analytics is about management."Enterprising Analytics" is about being creative, resourceful and adventurous with decision making to achieve business objecti
  
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• This rugged AR eyewear is similar to Google Glass but won't break

  04-04-2017 17:00
  
  While some people considered Google Glass eyewear simply cool or nosy, the devices were a gold mine of innovation for Pete Jameson.Jameson, the chief operating officer at Osterhout Design Group, believes Google Glass spread awareness and spawned innovation in eyewear. ODG is among a few companies bringing forward new ideas to make smartglasses practical.ODG's latest R-7HL is a pair of rugged augmented-reality smartglasses that protects eyes from projectiles. The glasses won't break easily a
  
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• DigitalOcean adds free monitoring to its cloud virtual machines

  04-04-2017 17:00
  
  DigitalOcean’s cloud platform became more useful to developers running production applications on Tuesday with the addition of monitoring capabilities for its virtual machines.Customers will be able to set alerts on the performance of their VMs, so that they’re notified via email or Slack when certain conditions are met. For example, users could set an alert to trigger if a machine is using more than 85 percent of its CPU capacity for five minutes.In addition, the monitoring service
  
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• How HPE plans to spin out its software assets

  04-04-2017 16:40
  
  After playing a key role in the 2015 bifurcation of Hewlett Packard into the consumer-focused HP Inc. and the enterprise-centric Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Chris Hsu is busy working on another big split. Hsu, currently HPE’s COO and GM of HPE Software, is preparing to spin out much of HPE’s software portfolio to Micro Focus in a deal announced last September. When the spin is completed, Hsu will also take over as CEO of Micro Focus, which will be a nearly $5 billion software c
  
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• New Hortonworks release focuses on SQL and EDW

  04-04-2017 16:03
  
  At the Dataworks Summit/Hadoop Summit in Munich today Hortonworks unveiled the latest version of its Apache Hadoop distribution, with features that focus on boosting the performance of SQL interactive queries and optimizing existing enterprise data warehouse (EDW) investments."It's all about performance, flexibility and choice," says Scott Gnau, CTO of Hortonworks. "We've made some significant improvements with the community to Apache Hive 2.0 operational and tactical query response times."To re
  
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• Facebook's rocket ship icon is a test flight for a secondary news feed

  04-04-2017 16:02
  If you see a rocket-ship icon on your Facebook feed on iOS or Android (top of the screen for Android, bottom for iOS), it's apparently because Facebook thinks one news feed is not enough. The social media platform is testing a second timeline where you can waste more time watching videos, memes, and reading popular articles.Tapping the rocket-ship icon shows a news feed made up of popular articles, videos, and other posts from Facebook Pages. These are items Facebook believes will interest you,
  
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• Google's Espresso networking tech takes SD-WAN to internet scale

  04-04-2017 16:00
  
  Google is working to accelerate the performance of its applications over the internet by building out a software-defined network at broad scale. On Tuesday, the company announced Espresso, a system that provides increased network performance to users of the company’s applications.It works by applying software-defined networking to the edge of the tech titan’s network, where Google connects to the peer networks of other internet service providers. Rather than rely on individual router
  
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• Why enterprises are upgrading to Windows 10 faster than expected

  04-04-2017 15:55
  
  In 2015, Gartner predicted that 50 percent of enterprises would start their Windows 10 deployments by January 2017. A Spiceworks survey of IT pros agreed: 40 of respondents said they would start migrating to Windows 10 by the middle of 2016, and 73 percent said their organizations would roll out Windows 10 by July 2017. A follow-up survey found that prediction was fairly accurate: 38 percent of organizations had already adopted Windows 10 by July 2016, most of them larger businesses.And in Octob
  
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• Amazon Unveils Deep Discounts On Select Unlocked Phones, Tues and Wed Only - Deal Alert

  04-04-2017 15:50
  
  If you're in the market for an unlocked phone, you'll save serious cash by buying one of these on Amazon, but the special event runs April 4 and 5 (Tuesday and Wednesday) only. These phones will work on any carrier. Browse the full list of unlocked phone deals on this special Amazon page, active April 4-5 only.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• Web inventor Berners-Lee adds Turing Award to prize collection

  04-04-2017 15:17
  
  Sir Tim Berners Lee, deservingly among the most decorated of technology professionals for his invention of the world wide web, has now been honored with the 50th edition of the ACM A.M. Turing Award (a.k.a., the Nobel Prize of Computing).The MIT and University of Oxford professor is being recognized with the $1M Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) prize, funded by Google, for inventing the web, coming up with the first browser and working on the protocols and algorithms that have allowed t
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Software companies should be disrupting industries, not workflows

  04-04-2017 15:00
  
  It’s time to rethink how software and platform services work, and go back to where we started -- helping digital teams work better.Believe it or not, enterprise organizations often come with systems and tools already in place. Teams take months to master new software, and it’s highly impractical to suggest that competing solutions don’t have tactical value, or that people are willing to change vendors at the drop of a hat. Once we accept that competitors may be beneficial to yo
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: The promise of AI as a social and business growth tool

  04-04-2017 14:00
  
  Since 2005, artificial intelligence (AI) has been on a fast-growing streak as a collection of multiple technologies that enable machines to sense, comprehend, act and learn, either on their own or to augment human activities, and it has been figuring on many released trends to watch research notes and whitepapers from important organizations, such as Gartner, Forrester and IDC.Looking back the past 10-15 years, there has been a lot of work in developing different AI technologies by major market
  
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• IDG Contributor Network: Is technology really disrupting the car-buying experience?  

  04-04-2017 14:00
  
  It’s often easy to get swept up in the excitement of technological disruptions. Just looking at the news coming out of both the Consumer Electronics Show and Mobile World Congress earlier this year, one would think flying cars are just around the corner. Clearly, technology is quickly driving connected cars and autonomous vehicles forward. In these cases, technology is certainly disrupting the driving experience. However, it’s not disrupting the buying experience as much as one
  
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• McAfee on its own as independent security vendor

  04-04-2017 13:45
  
  Effective today, McAfee has officially spun out from Intel, dumping the name Intel Security and operating under new majority ownership that has deep pockets to help the company aggressively acquire technology via mergers and acquisitions to supplement home-grown innovations.Investment firm TPG is making a $1.1 billion equity investment in McAfee in return for 51% ownership, giving it the cash it needs to buy companies for their technology so it can be incorporated faster into McAfee platforms th
  
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• Do you really need a CEO?

  04-04-2017 13:31
  
  When Shawn Moore co-founded website design and content management software company Solodev in 2007, he knew he didn't want to take on the role of chief executive, and neither did his co-founder. So, the two followed conventional wisdom and hired on a CEO. But it soon become clear that they'd made the wrong decision -- because they didn't know what to do with him.
  "Typically the founder becomes the CEO, and that's fine for some people, but in my case, I'm a software developer and a product guy. I
  
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• Teradata CEO aims to regain 'customer focus' with embrace of cloud and open source

  04-04-2017 13:13
  
  Teradata's new CEO, Victor Lund, has promised to address customer demand for cloud deployment options and open source analytics tools, with the company "shying away" from adopting new services in the past.The announcements made at the vendor's annual EMEA conference today were to that end, with a more flexible data base licensing model to support cloud deployments, as well as an all-SSD version of its IntelliFlex appliance and an entry level engineered system suitable for Hadoop deployments.Lund
  
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• How IT can foster a spirit of ‘intrapreneurship’

  04-04-2017 13:11
  
  Entrepreneurship is typically associated with startup companies, and the eager, driven and innovative minds that start them. But there's another type of entrepreneurship, and it lives inside established organizations.Intrapreneurs are already employed in your organization -- they're workers with progressive ideas that will benefit the company. The only problem is, these intrapreneurs often struggle to find the right channels to see their ideas realized."These are the employees who want to get th
  
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• Trump’s budget: Say goodbye to U.S. tech pre-eminence

  04-04-2017 13:00
  
  The internet was created thanks to funding from the U.S. government — and the United States is still riding the economic boom and wave of creativity it unleashed. That’s just one example of how government spending has fueled innovation that drives the world’s largest economy.But now, thanks to President Trump’s recent budget proposal, the U.S. faces losing its worldwide tech leadership. Far from making America great again, the budget would go a long way toward making the
  
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• 5 ways data classification can prevent an insurance data breach

  04-04-2017 12:38
  
  Insuring that your data is safeImage by Yohan CreemersInsurance firms collect and process large amounts of policyholder data including personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI), as well as sensitive employee and company information that must be protected. Confidential data is the core of the business, and companies that collect and analyze it more effectively have a competitive advantage. And with the cost of file sharing and synchronization technology decr
  
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• 12 cases that will look fabulous on your new red iPhone 7

  04-04-2017 12:30
  
  Seeing redImage by AppleYou’ve got your gorgeous new red iPhone 7, and you’ve managed to make it a whole week without dropping it, scratching it, or throwing it at the wall—congrats! But now it’s time to get back to the real world and slap a case on that thing.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
  
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• What makes a good application pen test? Metrics

  04-04-2017 12:27
  
  When it comes to creating secure applications, nothing beats focusing on the basics: secure coding in development and then testing the application for security defects. Part of the testing regime should always include an in-depth application pen test. But how do organizations know they are getting the full benefit from such assessments?What goes (or should go) into developing application security is well known. Developers should have their code vetted in their development environment. Their code
  
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• WebAssembly library supercharges web video apps

  04-04-2017 12:00
  
  WebAssembly, the portable code format for making the web faster, will be extended to digital signal processing with a client-side library now in development.The WebDSP library features a collection of algorithms for building web applications operating on media data. Methods are written in C++, compiled to WebAssembly (wasm), and exposed as vanilla JavaScript functions.[ Only on InfoWorld: A beginner's guide to Angular. Get started today! | Keep up with hot topics in programming with InfoWorld's
  
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• After political Twitter bot revelation, are companies at risk?

  04-04-2017 12:00
  
  With reports of Russia using social media and bots to push fake news to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, questions are arising over how these same tactics could be used against an enterprise."Twitter bots could absolutely be used against a company," said Dan Olds, an analyst with OrionX. "Someone using bots could manufacture a fake groundswell of opinion against a company or a product."The subject of Twitter bots has made headlines since federal investigations into Russia's interfe
  
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• Cegeka, KPMG en Microsoft samen in praktische blockchain-toepassingen

  04-04-2017 10:59
  Professionaliseren van dienstverlening op basis van blockchain-technologie. Daarop gaan Cegeka, KPMG en Microsoft zich samen richten. Met behulp van blockchain kan informatie over een groot aantal sectoren worden samengebracht, terwijl transacties zich zonder ‘trusted third party’ kunnen voltrekken, op een... lees meer
  
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• Intel divests McAfee after rough marriage, will now secure hardware

  04-04-2017 06:05
  
  Intel's finally washing its hands of McAfee after seven up and down years, which included a lawsuit last year from John McAfee, after whom the company is named.The chip maker has divested its majority holdings in McAfee to investment firm TPG for US$3.1 billion.McAfee will now again become a standalone security company, but Intel will retain a minority 49 percent stake. The chip maker will focus internal operations on hardware-level security.For Intel, dumping majority ownership in McAfee amount
  
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• Notorious iOS spyware has an Android sibling

  04-04-2017 02:56
  
  Security researchers have uncovered the Android version of an iOS spyware known as Pegasus in a case that shows how targeted electronic surveillance can be.Called Chrysaor, the Android variant can steal data from messaging apps, snoop over a phone’s camera or microphone, and even erase itself.On Monday, Google and security firm Lookout disclosed the Android spyware, which they suspect comes from NSO Group, an Israeli security firm known to develop smartphone surveillance products.Fortunate
  
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• How to rescue your PC from ransomware

  04-04-2017 02:51
  With  nasty malware like Locky making the rounds—encrypting its victims’ files, and then refusing to unlock them unless you pay up—ransomware is a serious headache. But not all ransomware is so difficult.You can remove many ransomware viruses without losing your files, but with some variants that isn’t the case. In the past I’ve discussed general steps for removing malware and viruses, but you need to apply some specific tips and tricks for ransomware
  
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• New ONOS release helps automate network configuration

  04-04-2017 02:45
  The latest update to the ONOS open networking operating system should make it easier to automatically configure devices and services on a network.ONOS Junco, demonstrated at the Linux Foundation's Open Networking Summit on Monday and available now, adds dynamic configuration and new virtualization capabilities. ONOS is designed to be a scalable controller for vast, software-defined service-provider and enterprise networks.The new release is the first one that works with YANG, a language defined
  
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• Banking hackers left a clue that may link them to North Korea

  04-04-2017 01:33
  
  The notorious hackers behind a string of banking heists have left behind a clue that supports a long-suspected link to North Korea, according to security researchers.The so-called Lazarus Group has been eyed as a possible culprit behind the heists, which included last February’s $81 million theft from Bangladesh’s central bank through the SWIFT transaction software.However, hackers working for the group recently made a mistake: They failed to wipe the logs from a server the
  
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