March 28, 2014

Amazon hints at new German datacenter, but probably not for the reasons you might think
What's significantly more likely, as Jassy hinted, is that it's more to do with "data sovereignty requirements" - specifically knowing where your data is stored, and under which legal jurisdiction. That's a major proponent of the new European data protection and privacy legislation that's currently going through the European Parliament, which sped up in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks. There's no doubt there's a push-pull effect going on here, but it's not the be-all and end-all by a long shot.


Payment card security revamp becoming chip vs. PIN tussle
EMV chip cards are used widely around the world and are considered much safer than magnetic stripe cards, especially when used in conjunction with a Personal Identification Number (PIN). However, retailers, which have to bear the bulk of the migration costs to EMV, say it's possible to improve U.S. payment card security quickly by simply implementing a mandatory PIN requirement for all credit and debit card transactions. Just as PINs are required to withdraw money from ATMs, PINs should be required for all payment card transactions, they say.


Migrating to Office 365 requires planning, pilot-testing
With Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft has entered the hosted/cloud email hosting market, and it's now among the company's fastest-growing products. As with any such changes, though, it's important to do the Office 365 migration right; email communication is too critical to put at risk. Companies need to plan their migrations carefully and pilot-test and verify at every step.


A Cyber History Of The Ukraine Conflict
Over the last few months Ukrainian websites (within the TLD .ua) have seen their fair share of defacements. Evidence indicates that Muslim hacking groups with pro-Syrian or anti-Israeli agendas conducted the majority of the defacements. A recent round by a group named Cyber Berkut is particularly troubling. Based on the targets attacked and symbolism used it’s very clear that the Cyber Berkut is pro-Russian. Some of the group’s tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) are similar to those used in cyber operations in 2007 and 2008 by the Kremlin against Estonia and Georgia.


Seagate Business Storage Windows Server review: No-nonsense NAS for business
You don’t set up this box as you would a NAS box that runs on Linux, by connecting the device to your network, typing a predefined IP address into your web browser, and having at it. You must first attach a keyboard and VGA display, and then define a password using its local interface. Once that’s completed, you can remove the keyboard and display, connect it to your network, and administer the box via Remote Desktop from another Windows PC on your LAN.


The Value of Being Approachable: Priceless
If you want to be approachable, the opportunities that come your way will dramatically increase. All you have to do is act as if you are wearing a name tag. When you wear a name tag, people know that you want them to be free to engage you in conversation. It’s an invitation that tells people, “Approach me, introduce yourself. It’s OK!” If you’re a manager, that’s the way you want people to see you and that’s the way you want your people to be seen. When people see you as approachable, all sorts of opportunities open up.


Pair Painting
We’ve established that there’s much to be gained from working as a pair - high standards, joint ownership, even fun! You need to be prepared to work at it, however. Simply sitting two people in front of a screen won’t automatically produce these results - but with a bit of effort and some careful inspect-and-adapt the magic will start to happen. If you and your team decide to give pair programming a go, there are many great resources available to help you get off the starting block


Conscious uncoupling in the enterprise: Time for the next phase of services
The API economy is well understood, as we've been working to put SOA practices in place for more than a decade now. However, what McNee calls the Internet of Everything is a vast, little-understood frontier. "Everything is a source of data, and everything is connected or connectable," he observes. "This emergent inter-connected business and IT reality brings with it unprecedented challenges, mainly due to its almost completely unpredictable scale and complexities.... its effects are likely to be outside of previous experience and its requirements will be beyond most existing skills and resources."


Cisco fixes denial-of-service flaws in IOS software for networking devices
The newly released IOS versions contain patches for two vulnerabilities identified in the software's Network Address Translation (NAT) feature that's commonly used in routing scenarios. One vulnerability could be exploited by sending malformed DNS packets to be processed and translated by an affected device and the other by sending certain sequences of TCP packets. "To determine whether NAT has been enabled in the Cisco IOS Software configuration, log in to the device and issue the 'show ip nat statistics' command," Cisco said in a security advisory published Wednesday


Software test management: Know which rules to follow, which to break
When you stop to think about the idea of 100% utilization as a measure of success, its absurdity is obvious. What if you kept all of your people busy all the time, but they were focusing on the wrong things? "When test managers hear me talk about this myth, they say, 'Oh my gosh,' and they look at me with their mouths open," Rothman said. To ensure success, test managers should focus on getting software projects – and features that are part of those projects -- out the door. The way to accomplish that is to optimize the team's workflow at a steady rate, according to Rothman.



Quote for the day:

"No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched." -- George Jean Nathan

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