Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

July 30, 2013

Are Conditions Right for a Chief Data Officer?
If we substitute "information" for "money", we have roughly similar picture. Everyone gathers it. Everyone uses it. But who is looking out for the big picture? Making sure that the information assets are working as hard as possible, that value is safeguarded, that it's being used appropriately? ... we're in the early days of business leaders starting to take their information assets very seriously: maximizing value, avoiding risks and safeguarding information assets.

Encrypting Backup Data for HIPAA and PCI Compliance
Stored data is a top target by hackers, especially the type of data that can be used for fraud and medical identity theft – within the healthcare industry in particular, encrypting stored data to meet HIPAA compliance is one way to avoid the HIPAA Breach Notification Rule and keep data secure.

Is the CMO now the Chief API Officer?
While the CIO budget is shrinking, the CMO budget is bulging. Often, I see instances where a CIO will go to the CMO for help and have them write the check. The CMO has become the king of IT without you knowing it. It helps them to track everything their potential customers are doing. Often they are now responsible for analysis and identifying emerging trends – which of course they can leverage for more effective campaigns.

IT Governance: Way to Succeed
“Given the growing complexity of the CIO role, the future CIO may find that appointing a CTO or a deputy is necessary. The deputy focuses on “keeping the lights on” - this will enable the CIO to capture opportunities that are advantageous to the organisation by strengthening the stage and supporting the management in advancing new ways of thinking and operating.”

Enabling Microservice Architectures with Scala
Kevin Scaldeferri, reports on using Scala for an SBT plug-in, for unit and functional testing, type-safe shared configuration using Zookeeper, and live inventory with WebSocket and Akka Actors. ... He has spoken at OSCON, YAPC, several user groups, and given internal tech talks on a variety of topics such as "How to Serve a Billion Requests a Day with Perl", "Beautiful Concurrency with Erlang", SBT, and more.

What cloud bursting and disaster recovery mean for hybrid cloud
Clearly, cloud bursting represents a more agile approach for a disaster strategy. If growth in an application's workload can trigger cloud bursting, a reduction in available resources to the application -- server or even data center failure -- could also trigger it. This DR strategy could deal with not only a complete data center failure but also limited equipment, software or even network failures.

Cybercrime 'bigger threat than nuclear war', UK lawmakers say
Committee Chair and MP Keith Vaz said: "We are not winning the war on online criminal activity. We are being too complacent about these E-wars because the victims are hidden in cyberspace. The threat of a cyber attack to the U.K. is so serious it is marked as a higher threat than a nuclear attack."

The Center of Analytics Success Takes on Communication Skills
An analyst at a global advisory firm says that communication skills are an “area for improvement” for CIOs—especially for individuals who want to “help lead the transformation of their companies." And another study found that 41% of survey respondents suggested communication skills were even more important than technical skills to ensure IT success!

Why Commenting Code Is Still a Bad Idea
To make life easier for the next developer, code should be written and rewritten to be as obvious as possible. What's left for comments to do is explain what the compiler doesn't have access to: why the code is there. Adding comments to explain how your code does its job -- which (I think) some readers were recommending -- is not the solution. It's just adding more cost.

The Countdown Begins: Support for Windows XP Ends on April 8, 2014
Computers running Windows XP routinely experience a significantly higher malware infection rate than computers running any other supported version of Windows. Much of the elevated infection rate on Windows XP can be attributed to the fact that some of the key built-in security features included with more recent versions of Windows are not present in Windows XP.

Quote for the day:

"You have to think anyway, so why not think big?" -- Donald Trump

July 29, 2013

New virtual networking technologies make convergence real
The fact that there are three distinct SDN models shouldn't discourage advocates of virtualization-based convergence. All three models offer improved Network as a Service capabilities, even though they differ in whether they focus on segmenting connectivity for the isolation of tenants and applications, or managing network traffic.

New Zealand updates cloud code of practice as ACS looks on
The code has two key tenets. The first is not calling the offering "cloud computing" unless it actually is. Cloud computing is defined in the code as: "On-demand scalable resources, such as networks, servers, and applications, which are provided as a service, are accessible by the end user and can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal effort or service provider interaction."

Feds Move To Open Source Databases Pressures Oracle
"The traditional, burdensome licensing practices of the big proprietary guys have really started to put new kinds of pressure on government agencies," he said. "Most of the licensing firms have come up with very inventive ways to make sure the price per year goes up and not down, and that's in direct conflict with the way government agencies are trying to operate now."

Quick Tips: Breaking Bad Employee Habits
Being motivated is key to high productivity, and 47% of employers value it as the most critical trait. If you have an unmotivated worker, his or her bad habits of showing up late to meetings, not being actively involved in brainstorming sessions, or not coming up with new, innovative ways to help the company may be resolved by teaming them up with one of your top performers.

How Android’s new App Ops controls could encourage privacy by design
It looks like the latest version of Android has an interesting little feature tucked away: granular controls for app permissions. The Android 4.3 feature, called “App Ops”, has just been flagged up by Android Police on Friday, and it looks like it could be a game-changer when it comes to privacy. ... For many developers, however, it could prove an utter nightmare. In the quest for privacy or longer battery life, many users may turn off bits of functionality then later wonder why those elements of the app don’t work.

Global worker communities emerge as Amcor thinks outside the box
“It’s a very decentralised business model that’s focused very much on business groups, which are all based in different countries and on different products,” corporate communications manager Zed Ivankovic said at an IBM social-business event in Melbourne. “From a technical point of view, we’ve found challenges around really simple things that you take for granted when you’re working in a one-site environment – things like sharing files, collaborating on files, and that sort of thing.”

How to improve network performance via advanced NIC options
Most NICs support jumbo frames, which means handling packets, or frames, of up to 9,000 bytes. Jumbo frames contain more data in each packet, so fewer packets are needed to convey data across the network. Throughput improves with less overhead -- packet headers and other packet content -- and CPU overhead shrinks.

How Rackspace hires admins: Textbook questions vs. break-fix challenges
But Walsh said if a candidate doesn't get a strong score on the online test, that doesn't necessarily exclude them from a job. An interview may reveal that a candidate who didn't do well on the test, is "a really solid systems administrator at a pretty high level," said Walsh. ... "We need people who can easily talk through situations with customers, as well as log-in and actually do the work," said Walsh.

Five Forces of Collaboration in a 24/7 Globalized World
Hardly a day passes without reference to today’s “globalized world” or its “borderless markets” as the justification for a particular business strategy. This type of connectedness plays a big part in building and extending a collaborative ecosystem that spans teams, departments and geographies. But to fully immerse a business in a connected, collaborative environment, it’s important to first understand what exactly connectedness is.

What to look for in a software engineering culture
Using the Mondrian tool at Google, we had a very clear code review process, where a changelist could not actually be submitted until the reviewer gave the "approval." Using Github's more lightweight code reviews at Coursera, we've had to come up with our own conventions on top of it, where the reviewer will say "Merge when ready" when they're happy or the reviewee will say "Please take another look" if they want a second review.

Quote for the day:

"Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory. " -- Mohandas Gandhi

July 28, 2013

Gamification is the best way to engage consumers say experts
David Smith, ceo of The GFF, reveals that gamification is being used in both the public and private sector, including government. “Changing the way we interact rather than being prescriptive to being playful and game means we’re being encouraged to do the right thing rather than being forced to do the right thing. It’s a very positive thing if used well.” “San Francisco has gamified the idea of speed control,” Smith explains.

Internet Traffic Jams, Meet Your Robot Nemesis
Remy is not designed to run on individual PCs and servers, but someday it may be used to develop better algorithms to run on those systems, said Hari Balakrishnan, the Fujitsu professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. For now, it's churning out millions of possible algorithms and testing them against simulated networks to find the best possible one for a given objective.

How do you build the right thing?
This eBook, first in a series of three, tries to answer the question “Where did the design phase go?” It collects a series of essays from ThoughtWorks designers around the world who are addressing product design challenges head-on by fusing agile development practices with the disciplines of interaction design.

IBM’s Big Data University Gears Up to Meet Enterprise Demand
IBM is committed to big data because we see the value of big data in every industry. Our goal is to enable the customers to really own their businesses. Not just teaching them how to program, but take them through the technology and its capabilities in the context of the applications and use cases. ... The correct mindset is to be open, bring creativity, do an exploration of the data. There is technology available to explore that data quickly and cost-effectively. That fear factor has to away.

3 Ways to Build Leadership Credibility in Tough Times
The America’s Workforce survey delivered some meaningful insights on areas leaders can focus on to build leadership credibility and lead more effectively. After all, we can keep talking about what is not right or we can focus on what we know we can do to make a difference. The survey results suggest that top leaders do three things effectively in successful organizations.

How to find on-demand expertise using crowdsourcing
Developing reputation systems is challenging. Although LinkedIn leads in terms of access to finding and connecting to professionals, the task of evaluation still falls to clients. But an expanding universe of smaller marketplaces, crowds, and communities provides not only connections but also evaluation in the form of reputation systems.

A New Breed of CFO
“Thinking about the ‘new breed’ of CFO, the analytical piece is a big differentiator and a reason I was chosen for this role over other candidates,” says Hightail’s Sizer, 47. “Folks like me are in high demand today to solve a data problem.” That is, most companies, but especially online technology companies, have massive amounts of data and must figure out how to use it to drive business performance improvements.

How To Help Top Talent Thrive
The smartest people often have unconventional expectations. They’re likely to assume managers don’t understand what they are doing, but they want respect for what they do. They want managers to recognize their ideas, and reward them with access to corporate leadership, information and resources. They want freedom to explore new territory, and permission to fail, because failure ultimately can lead to better outcomes.

Does anyone in IT truly relax on vacation?
Brian Kelley, the CIO of Portage County IT Services in Ravenna, Ohio, said, "Work will always impede upon my vacations to some degree." Similar to de Lima, Kelley says that checking on things makes the return from vacation easier. "By managing some work while on vacation, I can rest assured that when I return to work catching up will not be a major headache nor require that I put in long days to do so," he said.

Quote for the day:

"To have long term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way." -- Pat Riley

July 27, 2013

Open-source project, Crypton, seeks to make encryption easier
"We wanted to develop more of a privacy platform that other developers and companies could use to integrate privacy in their applications without having to be cryptographers," Oberman said. "We want people to understand the power of privacy and understand it is not an interference and not an inhibitor to product development."

Integration on the Edge: Data Explosion & Next-Gen Integration
Today's "shadow IT" world - where every department seems to have the capability and desire to implement some form of IT infrastructure has resulted in a lot of developers driving the charge for Cloud adoption in organizations. Dave Linthicum rightly points out that the best approach is to start at the top.

New Onshore IT Outsourcing Centers Outnumber New Offshore Locations
Onshore centers can present unique challenges to service providers, including higher wages and overall cost of operations, reduced scalability, and--perhaps surprisingly--increased attrition rates. "Attrition in onshore locations for some transactional skills, such as basic applications development work or transaction processing, may be higher than offshore locations given availability of alternate career options in these locations, says Dani.

Top 7 Reasons Why SOAP and REST Interfaces Are Littered With Vulnerabilities
Unfortunately, their rapid rise in popularity also brings significant and damaging security vulnerabilities. Understanding how to provide web and mobile application security against these vulnerabilities is only one small step in the right direction. Developers face a number of challenges when it comes to building secure code. Let’s look at a few of them:

Ubuntu: One OS, one interface, all devices
As Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical and Ubuntu's founder said at OSCon, the major open-source convention held in Portland, OR, "Convergence is the core story. Each device is great, but they should be part of one family. On any device you'll know what you're doing. One device should be able to give you all the experiences you can get from any one of them."

6 wishes for SysAdmin Appreciation Day
Reportedly it's kind of a big deal in Russia. And why not? All long-suffering peoples deserve their own day of celebration. Mothers get flowers, chocolate, and breakfast in bed. Fathers get ties, power tools, and craft beer. Sysadmins get ... O'Reilly books? Energy drinks? Nerf guns? Actually, high-calorie foods top the list of traditional offerings. But maybe we can do a bit better this year. Maybe we can give sysadmins a voice and allow them to ask for what they really want.

Health Data Breach Trends: An Analysis
One thing that hasn't changed: The No. 1 cause of breaches continues to be lost or stolen unencrypted devices and media. It's amazing that so many breaches still involve unencrypted devices. The importance of encryption should top-of-mind by now, given all the publicity about breaches since 2009. But perhaps these continuing breaches are proof of just how difficult it is to manage mobile devices, especially as BYOD proliferates.

CIOs Issue Social Media Privacy Practices Guide
The guide, which explains privacy best practices for establishing a social media program, addresses various ways the federal government can use social media for information sharing, situational awareness and to support agency operations. ... The guidance warns against posting information collected about specific individuals, seeking to connect with other internal or external personal users, accepting other internal or external personal users' invitations to connect; or interact on social media.

Business and enterprise architecture - match made in heaven
Often business process management and associated discipline such as business architecture are seen or managed in isolation of the overarching enterprise architecture construct. However the business architecture and enterprise architecture complement each other well to get the best value from each other.

How to Build Reliable Systems
Mission-critical and enterprise-wide computer systems today are often very complex with many moving parts and even more interfaces between components; this presents special challenges even for expert configuration management engineers. These systems are getting more complex as the demand for features and rapid time to market provides unique issues that many technology professionals could not have envisioned even a few years ago.

Quote for the day:

"Patience accomplishes its object, while hurry speeds to its ruin." -- Saadi

July 26, 2013

The Odd Couple: Hadoop and Data Security
There are more missing pieces concerning data, as nothing was built into the Apache project. There was no standard way for encrypting data, and neither was there any way for regulating who can have what kinds of privileges with which sets of data. Obviously, that matters when you transition from low level Web log data to handling names, account numbers, account balances or other personal data.

Choosing cloud infrastructure for business and technology flexibility
The goal of the cloud is to produce economies of scale in resources and to allow a provider to offer a service that saves the buyer money, but at the same time earns a profit for the seller. Striking this win-win balance is the central mission of deploying cloud infrastructure and platforms, and that mission can be fulfilled in three ways:

Wall Street’s Exposure to Hacking Laid Bare
Mark Clancy, said that “for the financial services industry, cyberthreats are a constant reality and a potential systemic risk to the industry.” ...Over the last few years, accidental technological mishaps at the trading firm Knight Capital and the Nasdaq and BATS stock exchanges have revealed how even isolated programming errors can quickly ripple through the markets, causing significant losses in minutes.

License plate readers: Where are the guidelines?

But right now there are no national policy guidelines regarding the use of LPR and the data it generates. LPR records data on the movements of vehicles belonging to both ordinary citizens and criminals, and the data may be stored forever or may expire in 90 days if it's not a "tag of interest," depending on the state. And the data isn't 100% accurate.

Disaster Recovery - Presentation

Check out this presentation by Cisco Asia's consulting engineer Kwai Seng, where he explains the various multi-site DR scenarios, with the possible solutions. He also compares the site selection techniques, namely, HTTP redirection, DNS based site selection and Route Health Injection based routing.

Review: PsExec is a Windows power user's best friend
Another neat little feature on the docket for PsExec is the ability to run a command remotely as the SYSTEM user. What this essentially means is that, when SYSTEM is called, you effectively have nothing stopping you or getting in your way from a permissions standpoint and you become a super user. This is much akin to root access on Linux, which means that you are playing with fire.

Smartest Way to Manage Your Business? Get Ready to Sell It
Even if you never sell your business, making it fit-for-sale is a tremendously worthwhile discipline. It ensures you are building an asset that other people can understand and respect. Being fit for sale means you run a tight ship that won't run aground easily. So even if you intend to hand on your company to the fifth generation--making it sellable is a great way to run it now.

Innovation doesn't live on democratic leadership
Sharing lessons he had learnt from spending 30 years in Silicon Valley, Sculley said disruptive innovation does not exist in an environment built on consensus. "There's no democracy in successful high-tech companies and it's actually pretty good when you have a quality leader. These are founders, and founders have a special position.

The Seven Stages of Advanced Threats and Data Theft
A report from Websense says--Anti-virus and URL filtering products once were sufficient protection against information security threats. But targeted attacks have changed things. Today’s advanced attacks occur in seven stages that can result in data theft.

The DaaS Disruption: How the Data-as-a-Service Model is Transforming Business Intelligence
DaaS is built on the idea that users can and should have easy access to mission-critical data in real time and without any major lags or strains on IT solutions in the process. Through combination of standardization, virtualization and automation, DaaS transforms the BI data gathering process from what used to involve multiple departments into a singular process that can be executed immediately and simply from a web interface.

Quote for the day:

"A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and those who are doing well to do even better." -- Jim Rohn

July 25, 2013

Disruptive Solution Secures Data Anywhere, Anytime — Q&A with Ionic Security’s Chairman
Startup Ionic Security’s platform touches data at its inception as it’s being created, which gives enterprise business policy owners and security group managers the ability to control that data no matter where it ends up anywhere in the world, in real time, as it’s being accessed. Founder, CTO and chairman Adam Ghetti explains how this cutting-edge security solution works and the path of its development.

Insights Ahead: The Rise of Analytics as a Service
The benefit AaaS delivers is agility and scalability. This is valuable, given that modern analytics is now effectively replacing the management reporting processes designed for an age of limited data that changed slowly. By contrast, executives now want to work with dynamic data that reflects real-time reality. AaaS can not only deal with that dynamic data but also adapt quickly to solve new problems as they emerge.

Choosing an open source software license for your development project
This is not a discussion about the pros and cons of OSS development, but it is a guide for those who currently develop in the open community and for those who wish to learn more about the various licensing options that are available for OSS. You will also want to consult with a legal expert before adopting any software license for your projects.

Cloud Computing for the CFO and the entire C-Suite
Executives responsible for customer care and support will get the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor, which uses cognitive computing to enable personalized customer conversations. The head of HR is targeted for the IBM SmartCloud for Social Business, which promises to find, analyze, source and acquire the best talent. Supply chain execs, chief procurement officers, the CFO, and even the CIO have been targeted.

Disaster is Coming. Are You Ready?
It doesn’t take a once-in-a-hundred-years kind of storm to trigger a power outage or disk failure. If you operate a small or mid-size business, now is the time to make sure you have the right continuity plans in place. There is good news: The emergence of cloud services now enables every business to have the kind of continuity plans that bigger companies routinely do.

How to Foster an IT Youth Movement
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) IT Outreach Program aims to entice students of all ages and backgrounds to consider careers in IT. We showcase real uses of IT in a fun and energetic way. The JPL IT Petting Zoo began as a cost-effective way to evaluate emerging technologies and their viability for JPL.

Cloud's effects on data center design principles, locale
Cloud computing's influence on data center design principles is still emerging. Companies implementing a private cloud platform should have undergone rigorous application rationalization, hardware virtualization and consolidation exercises. This may have left them with around 20% to 40% of the original data center equipment

Microsoft to offer Java as a service
Microsoft will offer the Java Standard Edition (Java SE) by the end of the year both as a stand-alone PaaS (platform as a service) and as component of a Windows Server IaaS (infrastructure as a service), both on the Windows Azure service. For the Java runtime, Microsoft has commissioned Azul Systems to develop and maintain a version of the Java OpenJDK, the reference implementation of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and runtime for Java SE.

EMC backup changes planned around convergence, ViPR
The changes are part of a strategy to re-shape EMC's data protection technology. David Goulden, EMC president and chief operating officer, said the vendor has spent $5 billion over the last 10 years in backup acquisitions and research and development. Now it has four backup apps to go with its target deduplication Data Domain boxes.

Almost half of India Web users attacked by local malware
While these numbers are astonishing, the numbers are most likely even higher for mobile users, assuming users have mobile protection to begin with. The same types of exploitation for computers exists for mobile devices, but with even more opportunities, such as downloading and installing apps from places that are neither trusted nor verified sources.

Quote for the day:

"The measure of success isn't if you have a tough problem, but whether it's the same one you had last year." -- J.F. Dulles

July 24, 2013

Building Scalable Applications in .NET: Introducing the FatDB Distributed Computing Platform
Even today, it’s common to find many disparate technologies duct-taped together into a byzantine edifice that tends to be brittle, slow and overly complicated. The current explosion of new Cloud-, PaaS- and NoSQL-related technologies than can handle many of these shortcomings is no coincidence; the blunt reality is that “doing it right” and meeting the needs of stakeholders is hard and requires abandoning old patterns and adopting new ways of thinking.

Comparing Windows Defender in Windows 8 vs. third-party malware tools
But users should be aware that the Windows Defender that ships with Windows 8 is not the same Windows Defender available to previous Windows versions. The original Windows Defender is an anti-spyware app users can download for free. Windows 8 Defender is essentially a rebranding of Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), an antivirus program also available for free for earlier Windows versions.

FDA asks hackers to expose holes in medical devices, but many researchers fear CFAA & jail
Black Hat USA, which normally has 80-90 talks, will feature a record-breaking number of 110 talks this year. SC Magazine wrote about how the fear of being sued or worse—going to prison—makes some security researchers edgy about disclosing vulnerabilities. And every year after Black Hat and Def Con, some red-faced company whose product was hacked will point fingers and make nasty accusations

Time and Distance Enemies of Agile Project Management
With physical distance comes increased opportunity for misunderstanding or delayed communications. Even if team members are just on a different floor of the building, you need more checkpoints and redundant communications to keep everyone in sync. ... The project isn't that important, doesn't have the right team members, serves as a political football, has goals that are a moving target or has simply been ill-conceived

Who Can Get Your Data Operations Up to Speed?
“Your ability to hire somebody for that role requires you to have a rather mature and robust organization, otherwise I think it’s always going to be the CIO’s ultimate responsibility,” says Manley. “And for me, the chief data officer is still somebody reporting to the CIO, somebody still a part of the technology organization. ... very, very large insurance businesses, what they’re doing as a result of the wild and uncontrollable nature of data that has grown in a 100-year-old organization, is a bit different, since I started from scratch.”

NTSB calls for wireless technology to let all vehicles 'talk' to each other
The board recommended that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration develop standards for "connected-vehicle technology" — wireless components that would let vehicles communicate on the road. ... With those standards in place, "NHTSA can then require this technology to be installed on all highway vehicles," Deborah Hersman, chairman of the NTSB, said at the board's meeting Tuesday. "This technology more than anything else holds great promise to protect lives and prevent injuries."

CIOs and the chief data officer: Who's the pioneer and who's the settler?
"[CIOs] have enormous portfolios to manage -- everything from data centers, cloud, desktop support, mobile; but the reality is that the business is trying to deal with being part of an integrated information economy," Casey said. "For organizations trying to be more competitive … folks can't wait for IT to keep up anymore."

The 4 Blind Spots That Could Lead to Failure
Blinders are also used by small-business owners, but they shouldn't be. Typically, business owners want to concentrate on sales, expenses and employees—and are "blind" to other things happening around them. They believe almost every problem can be solved with more sales, more productive employees and fewer expenses. In business, what you don’t see is often what hurts your business the most. I liken it to getting hit in the back of your head with a 2x4. You never see it coming.

Is Your Organization Ready for Total Digitization?
How are enterprises managing the spread and scope of total digitization? We at MIT CISR have found that enterprises are using one or more of three approaches to managing total digitization: convergence, coordination, or a separate digital innovation stacks approach. Each approach has very different objectives and measures of success.

WebLogic + Coherence + Tuxedo = Cloud Application Foundation
Cloud Application Foundation has been optimized to run on Oracle's Exalogic Elastic Cloud appliance for private cloud deployments, and can also run on public clouds, like the Oracle Java Cloud service. It comes with a new integrated management framework (install, update, patch and provisioning) for WebLogic Server, Coherence and Oracle Web Tier.

Quote for the day:

"The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen. " -- Lee Iacocca

July 23, 2013

Will CSOs become CROs in the future?
At a high level, the new responsibilities include understanding your company's risk profile and risk appetite and then mitigating the risks accordingly. Greg Thompson, vice president of enterprise security services and deputy CISO at Toronto s Scotia Bank, already sees his role evolving into something like head of operational risk management. Scotia is Canada's third largest bank.

Cisco: Multimode Small Cells Coming Early 2014
"The 3G and Wi-Fi pieces are mature," Mishra said. "The work we are doing is on LTE on the access side and core network infrastructure side. It's all available today with our packet core, so we can reuse that." As the company moves to multimode, it's still focusing on areas where network congestion is most acute, such as indoor venues.

F5 data center firewall aces performance test
The F5 firewall moved static objects over SSL at rates that met or exceeded the capacity of the Avalanche test tool, moving 10- and 512-kbyte objects at 17.288G and 20.919Gbps respectively. Both numbers are at least 1Gbps faster than those for the Avalanche tool running back to back with no firewall inline.

From evolution to revolution with the Internet of Things
The idea is that all of our devices will be able to communicate with each other to assist users in businesses in doing their jobs, with particular influence on hospitals and factories. But General Electric hijacking the conversation on the Internet of Things shouldn't hide the fact that this isn't a new idea, argues David, along with his guest, Adrian Bowles, founder and CEO at STORM Insights Inc.

How Criticism Creates Innovative Teams
When ideas are still being developed or decisions still being considered, criticism and constructive conflict are vital to testing the value of the ideas and helping increase that value. Conflict is an indicator that diverse viewpoints are being considered and that the competition for ideas is still ongoing. During this competition, ideas are strengthened through further research, consideration or through the blending of different ideas into one stronger concept.

CRM-Cloud Relationship Management
Michel van Woudenberg, Vice President, CRM, Oracle Asia Pacific, on CRM cloud is revolutionizing the customer space: "I think a lot of industries in India are actually quite in the forefront on adopting cloud in order to be differentiating towards their customers. I would say the government in India and BSFI, especially the public banks, are a bit behind compared to other regions in Asia Pacific."

750 million phones vulnerable to spying: Hack SIM card via tainted text to get root
Give this German cryptographer two minutes on a PC and he can send a send a secret text message that contains a “virus” to a mobile phone’s SIM card, and then basically get “root” and take over the phone. That text can allow him to eavesdrop, make purchases via mobile payment systems and otherwise “trick mobile phones into granting access to the device's location, SMS functions and allow changes to a person's voicemail number.”

User Defined Field
Usually the best option is to use a Serialized LOB, essentially creating a large text column into which you store the user-defined fields as a JSON or XML document. Many databases these days offer pretty nice support for this approach, including support for indexing and querying based on the data structure within the LOB. ... Another route is using some kind of attribute table. A table might look something like this.

5 Exciting Tech Companies You've Probably Never Heard Of
The new technologies that we usually hear about are from tech giants. On any given day, it seems that one of those companies steals the headlines. That’s a shame, because some of the most interesting companies are ones that rarely make headlines. They are often located in out of the way places or develop technologies behind the scenes, where their logo isn’t paraded in front of us on a daily basis. Nevertheless, they are important and do exciting work.

Why security metrics aren't helping prevent data loss
The survey appears to have found the disconnect --business speak versus IT speak. Business metrics that executives are familiar with tend to reflect strategic goals, prioritizing cost over less tangible security benefits. Where security metrics favor operational goals, and prioritize technical improvements over business contingencies.

Quote for the day:

"Absolute identity with one's cause is the first and great condition of successful leadership." -- Woodrow Wilson

July 22, 2013

UK spies aren’t breaking law by using PRISM data, security oversight committee claims
The committee issued a statement on Wednesday in which it said it had extracted “substantive reports” out of UK intelligence service GCHQ, which detailed which citizens were monitored through PRISM, what information was gleaned, which warrants were obtained and so on. The committee also talked to the NSA and Congress.

Big data privacy concerns spur research, innovation
Masses of mobile phone data already exist, said panelist Alex “Sandy” Pentland, director of MIT’s Human Dynamics Lab and Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program. “Companies gather it but are scared to use it,” he said. “It’s politically controversial. But we have to start to see that cell phone and public data is for the public good.”

Closing the Big Data Skills Gap Requires Educational Innovation
Here's the issue that the IT industry is already starting to deal with: Big data creates lots of new, well-paying jobs but in a digital update of the prime maxim of Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, demand will outstrip supply, some experts contend. And it will get worse, because those newly graduated data scientists are too few in number and possess the wrong skills needed to fill that big data gap.

6 Surprising Secrets of Truly Great Bosses
The very best managers do the exact opposite of what the average manager does. At best, following conventional wisdom results in mediocrity. Truly great bosses don't just march to the beat of a different drummer, they convince everyone else to march along with them. Here's how:

When Will ‘Bursting’ Become Acceptable Boardroom Terminology?
The “so what” factor here comes down to how CIO’s are referring to cloud and explaining its “burstability” (not a real word) to the CEO; indeed, this use of the term bursting has been as widely adopted by cloud hosting providers such as Amazon Web Services and Rackspace as it has by companies selling broader IT services such as HP, IBM or any of the other usual “big vendor” suspects.

Data, Metadata and the Assumption of Quality
We have no way of knowing if the underlying operational data is accurate (as well as other aspects of data quality), nor do we have any way of verifying any aspect of the information quality. Some of the metadata could be verified by cross-referencing other sources (e.g., for books, we could verify the metadata with the publishers and other sellers such as Barnes & Noble).

Is there room for network admins in software-based networking?
The good news for IT professionals is that virtualization reduces costs and improves flexibility, but it increases complexity. Management software companies have diligently worked to develop solutions that take the pain out of this complexity. In fact, it is management software that allows admins to wrangle herds of servers with drag and drop -- not the virtualization technology itself.

How could anyone confuse BPM and event processing?
The fact is that more than a few corners of the marketplace know very little about the difference between BPM (business process management) and what’s typically called CEP (complex event processing). These two concepts are very different and understanding those differences in today’s business climate will mean success or failure for many organizations.

Sony to sell 'world's first' SD card-based backup for PCs
Sony announced the product on Thursday, and said it will be available in Japan from August 20 in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB versions. The backup software will initially support only Windows-based machines. The cards are rated Class 4 speed, a standard that provides write speeds of at least 4MBps.

Quote for the day:

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

July 21, 2013

It's getting warmer in some data centers
The U.S. General Services Administration, as part of data center consolidation and efficiency efforts, has recommended raising data center temperatures from 72 degrees Fahrenheit to as high as 80 degrees. Based on industry best practices, the GSA said it can save 4% to 5% in energy costs for every one degree increase in the server inlet temperature.

eProvided SD Recovery Firm Confirms Samsung's Mass Production of 128GB NAND Chips
With SD recovery problems, it's important to remember that even though digital media is safer to use when compared to HDD's, digital devices and USB flash drives, they do fail and a service to recover USB drive devices will be badly needed. Compact flash data recovery services have also been used for years by professional and amateur photographers experiencing SD recovery issues.

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) for Software Systems
User Acceptance Testing should never be used to detect programming bugs, integration bugs, or design flaws. These should be detected by the previous testing phases: development testing and Quality Assurance testing. To achieve these goals UAT must be conducted in a production-like environment and the system exercised by at least one representative of every functional group in the user community.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni's leadership style offers invaluable lessons for managers
MS Dhoni, India's most successful cricket captain, is well on his way to be regarded as one of the greatest leaders the game has seen. In the past, people have attributed his success to luck, timing, good fortune and the like. But on closer analysis of his success, we see a clear pattern emerging. Dhoni's leadership style offers invaluable lessons to managers at all levels.

Why In-Memory Computing Is Cheaper And Changes Everything
Some people think that we’re talking about in-memory because of all the hype that’s been going on in the market – but it’s not just SAP. Every single vendor out there is getting involved in in-memory technology. ... You won’t have tape drives, you won’t have disk drives. You’ll be using flash and memory. Flash will be your backup, your archive, and memory is where you’re going to run everything.

What Data Do the Five Largest Tech Companies Collect? [INFOGRAPHIC]
Baynote has created an infographic that shows the vast amounts of different types of data that is collected by the five largest tech companies in the world: Google, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo! and Amazon. Not surprisingly they collect vast amounts of different types of data, ranging from search queries, profile information to even your phone number.

Some Data Center Operators Take Their Chances with Floods
One thing is certain, experts say: Few IT organizations -- even those that suffered or narrowly escaped damage during recent major storms -- are thinking long term. Most IT leaders are, if anything, taking the path of least resistance and least expense. For instance, the response to Hurricane Sandy, on the East Coast at least, "is nothing more than hardening existing data centers," says Peter Sacco

IT Cannot Be Only the CIO's Responsibility
Accountability for some of these areas reside with the CEO and the other members of the C-suite (we are assuming CIO is a member of the c-suite), for others with LOB manager, and some will be shared. What is clear is that they are not the sole responsibility of the CIO. All members of the C-suite needs to recognize and embrace their fundamental roles.

SAN Vs NAS Storage Network
A SAN (storage area network) and NAS (network attached storage) are two primary options for large storage across a network. Both have storage devices unique to their solution and specific network connection configuration. Although there are clear differences between the two, vendors are beginning to package the two as one, leveraging the benefits each solution provides.

Today’s datacentres are not fit for the cloud, shows study
“Many datacentres that exist today are based on 20-year-old technologies and they can no longer keep up with demand,” said Jason Nolet, vice-president datacentre switching and routing at Brocade. “Virtualisation and cloud models require greater datacentre network agility and performance, as well as reduced operational cost and complexity.

Quote for the day:

"One of my guiding principles is, don't do anything that other people are doing" -- Seymour Cray