May 21, 2014

CFOs get schooled on hope and hype of big data analytics
How many chiefs does it take to invest in big data? If you haven't already, it's time to add CFOs to that list. "We used to see big data as a CIO-IT cost consolidation problem. In fact, the debate has completely shifted. It's all about revenue, growth and enhancement," said Jo Tango, co-founder and partner at venture capital firm Kepha Partners. "I would argue [that], in the big data age, CFOs have even more power and leverage as the people who write checks."


Reactive Cloud Actors: An Evolvable Web of Events
In case of a Reactive actors, the sender simply publishes an event signifying the business process accomplished and other actors choose to subscribe to such events and perform their actions. In this case, actors can evolve independently and business processes modified with only change to a single or a handful of actors. This results in higher level of decoupling and is a good fit for developing both analytics and transactional systems on the horizontal scale provided by the cloud. Implementations of Reactive Actors already exist in the industry. Fred George's body of work on Reactive MicroServices is a prime example. Amazon Kinesis can be viewed as a coarsely granular Reactive Actor framework.


Security's future belongs to open source
The proof that open source, properly applied, is available. Studies, such as the one recently done by Coverity, have found that open-source programs have fewer errors per thousand lines of code than its proprietary brothers. And, it's hard to ignore the Communications-Electronics Security Group (CESG), the group within the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) that assesses operating systems and software for security issues, when they said that that while no end-user operating system is as secure as they'd like it to be, Ubuntu 12.04 is the most secure desktop. On the other hand, the mere existence of Microsoft's monthly Patch Tuesday says everything most of us need to know about how "secure" proprietary software is.


Top Initiatives to Improve IT
Management consultancy McKinsey & Co. surveyed business executives from across functions to find out their attitudes about IT. One question asked what initiatives would be most important to improving IT performance. More than 738 executives responded, and the results were published in late March. McKinsey’s takeaway: “Surprisingly, more IT executives than business leaders see changing IT leadership as a priority to improve IT performance.” Here are McKinsey’s top nine initiatives to improve IT performance based on the results.


How To Fix Windows Server Network Performance Problems
More often than not, the network performance problems are the result of a Windows security feature. By default, Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 digitally sign SMB packets. This digital signature helps to protect against spoofing, but it adds some overhead to the traffic stream. You can get rid of this overhead and improve performance by disabling the SMB packet signing feature. Keep in mind however, that disabling SMB signing does reduce security, so you should only use this fix if you are experiencing disruptive performance or reliability problems.


Businesses increase IT spending at fastest rate for eight years, say IT leaders
The survey shows that after five years of cost cutting, CIOs' number one priority has shifted to providing their business with an efficient IT service.Two-thirds of IT leaders are prioritising projects that make money for the business in an indication that more companies are focusing on investment in IT for growth rather than to save money. And more CIOs are more optimistic that their IT budgets will continue to grow than at any time since the survey began in 2005, with some 44% expecting more budget increases next year, the research revealed.


AT&T hacker wants government to pay him $13M
"I want history to record that I made an honest and public attempt to get reasonable compensation," from the government, Auernheimer said in comments via email to Computerworld. "Whatever I do in the future, I want people to know that I tried peaceful civil actions first." The U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey in March 2013 sentenced Auernheimer to 41 months in prison for violating provisions of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Last month, the United State Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit vacated that sentence on a technicality, holding that the case had been pursued in the wrong venue.


Hybrid strategies common as organizations strive for cloud GRC
Banks, for example, are required by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act to have well-rounded third-party risk management, according to VanSickel. This includes initial due diligence on the third party's history, then extensive research on the security controls and services provided by the company, he said. Additionally, the organization procuring cloud services will need audit capabilities. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and Payment Card Industry customers need to recertify yearly to ensure they are still complying with regulations, and the cloud provider should be able to meet these requirements.


China retaliates, nixes Windows 8 on government PCs
According to the Xinhua News Agency, an official press arm of the People's Republic, Windows 8 has been barred from government, but not private, PCs. "It's a good sound bite for the Chinese government, it goes well as a response to the DOJ action, and if sales are low -- even if they eventually use it -- they'll have a statement to back it up," said Michael Silver, an analyst with Gartner, in an email reply to questions. Silver referred to yesterday's charges by the U.S. Department of Justiceleveled against five Chinese hackers with links to the People's Liberation Army (PLA), China's military. The DOJ accused the five of breaking into numerous U.S. companies' networks and stealing trade secrets and intellectual property.


5 Ways Your Business Can Benefit from Agile Engineering Practices Today
The key is the word ‘process’. It’s tech stack agnostic. And the key to getting the full benefit of Agile Engineering Practices is having the diligence to uphold a certain minimum level of process discipline when things get hairy. It’s like exercising. If you exercise 5 times a week when you’re on vacation and 1 time per week when you have a tough work week, then in actuality you exercise once per week. If you practice pairing and TDD when you have no deadlines and throw Agile out the window once you have a tight deadline, then you’re not diligently practicing the process of Agile. Five specific benefits that businesses can gain by using Agile Engineering Practices are:



Quote for the day:

"Your future is created by what you do today, not tomorrow" -- Robert Kiyosaki

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