Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

April 11, 2014

FTC Can Sue Companies Hit with Data Breaches, Court Says
Security and legal experts saw the case as a landmark test of the agency's authority to enforce data security standards on U.S. companies under a section of the FTC Act that prohibits "unfair" and "deceptive" trade practices. Over the past several years, the FTC has used this clause to force numerous settlements, or "consent decrees," from companies that suffered data breaches. In her 46-page ruling Judge Salas rejected all of the Wyndham's claims and held that the FTC does have the authority to hold companies accountable for breaches resulting from their failure to apply proper security controls.

Bank on Cloud
A Microsoft Asia survey gives some interesting insights on how consumers in Asia use cloud storage services today ... Cloud storage services such as OneDrive, is like a bank. There was time when many people wondered if Banks were safest place for their cash; but most of us safe keep money in our preferred banks. Drawing parallels from history, the perception of cloud storage is changing and consumers are increasingly using it to save, share and access their valuable files and precious moments safely and with ease.

Why Should You Build Your Business Processes in the Cloud?
BPM on Cloud is IBM’s Business Process Management platform available as a fully managed cloud service. The cloud service went live in 2013 as a subscription-based service with the same world-class BPM capabilities available in the licensed product. It includes a BPM development, test and a highly available “Run” environment that is securely hosted in IBM’s SoftLayer data centers around the world. Each company gets their own dedicated BPM environment that is completely isolated from other companies’ data and secured with encrypted access to the service

Privacy authorities across Europe approve Microsoft’s cloud commitments
This is an important week for the protection of our customers’ privacy. The European Union’s data protection authorities have found that Microsoft’s enterprise cloud contracts meet the high standards of EU privacy law. This ensures that our customers can use Microsoft services to move data freely through our cloud from Europe to the rest of the world. Building on this approval, we will now take proactive steps to expand these legal protections to benefit all of our enterprise customers. The EU’s 28 data protection authorities acted through their “Article 29 Working Party” to provide this approval via a joint letter.

Heartbleed Bug hits at heart of many Cisco, Juniper products
So far, Cisco has carved out a list of about a dozen products listed as confirmed “vulnerable” to exploits based on the Heartbleed Bug, plus another list of over 60 products considered “affected” because of OpenSSL but still being investigated. About two dozen products have been confirmed to be “not vulnerable,” as well as the hosted Cisco service called Cisco Meraki Dashboard. Cisco also says its Webex service was vulnerable to the Heartbleed Bug but has been fixed. This long list made by Cisco is subject to change and updates and at any moment, no specific software security updates have been made available, though could change at any time.

Nearly 100% Are Open To Outside Help From Trustworthy Sources

"Given how vitally important it is for the CEO to be getting the best possible counsel, independent of their board, in order to maintain the health of the corporation, it's concerning that so many of them are 'going it alone,'" says Stephen Miles, CEO of The Miles Group. There are many fee-based CEO peer groups (also known as 'executive roundtables' or 'mastermind groups') across the country offering opportunities for owners, presidents, and CEOs to gather with their peers and have dialogue in a confidential open table format. Some are regionally specific and others are industry specific.

Website admins will be busy dealing with Heartbleed
The first thing website owners should do is determine who is responsible for maintaining the OpenSSL software on the servers that host their sites. "If it is a dedicated server, it is your responsibility," researchers from Web security firm Sucuri said in a blog post. "If you are on a shared hosting platform, contact your hosting provider to remind them to update their servers." Once the OpenSSL installation is patched on the server and attacks are no longer possible, it's time to obtain a new SSL certificate and revoke the old one to ensure that any private key information attackers might have obtained though the flaw won't allow them to decrypt traffic in the future.

Challenge: Keeping the Internet of Things grounded in reality
IoT is one big, complex scenario, and really needs to be toned down to specific functions and applications where it really makes sense, and is straightforward to implement. There are some great feet-on-the-ground examples of where it is creating new business opportunities. In insurance, for example, auto insurers are installing telematics sensors into policyholders' cars (with their consent, so far) to track driving patterns — and offer discounts to good drivers.

Pros and cons of using secure containers for mobile device security
Secure containers are an important part of mobile application management (MAM), along with security policies such as requiring PIN locks and whitelisting specific applications. Containerization provides a balance of security and enhanced productivity to employees, so it’s important that the secure container experience is good enough for employees to keep using it. ... One of the biggest benefits from a management perspective is that this technology allows IT to take a unified security approach and apply policies or actions across multiple devices.

Developers Oriented Project Management
Many agencies have fear of letting the programmers, especially junior programmers talk with the customer. They are not confident in their own programmers communication skills. However there is no other way for them to learn it, but to actively and constantly talk to the client. Engage in the communication to understand the domain of the problem and real business cases that are the reason for the software to be built. After all, that's what Domain Driven Development encourage us to do. To talk to the customer and get to know their domain very well.

Quote for the day:

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing" -- GB Shaw

April 10, 2014

The Search for Creative Destruction
In our view, the process of creative destruction is primarily driven by product or business model innovation – often abetted by technology– that results in a superior value offering for consumers, be it higher performance, greater convenience or lower cost. This enhanced value proposition is the source from which economic benefits then flow, first to the innovator and over time to its consumers and competitors. The new product or model often proliferates into a new paradigm until subsequent innovation in turn threatens its dominant position.

How Tech Can Help Cities Reduce Crime
Camden County Police Chief Scott J. Thomson calls it a "significant departure from policing" in that it moves both toward the future and the past. "With our boots-on-the-ground goals, it's like 1840s policing of having cop building relationships," he says. "What's allowed them to do that is having bleeding-edge technology. It's back to the future technology." ... because cars are GPS-tracked through an Automated Vehicle Locator System, the system automatically locates the two nearest patrol cars to an emergency and directs them via in-car computers to that location.

Stung by file-encrypting malware, researchers fight back
Kevin Haley, director of Symantec's security response team, said Wednesday "it's the perfect kind of criminal scam. You get people scared and not thinking, and you can make a lot of money out of it." Ransomware schemes may be rising due to the sheer profitability and declining effectiveness of Web-based scams such as bogus security programs. Haley said Symantec estimates ransomware perpetrators on an average achieve a 3 percent response rate, and demand payment that is much higher than those peddling fake AV software, typically $50.

Internet Of Things Demands Open Standards
Ashton says the next-generation IoT has the potential to change the world, and I agree. By eliminating human beings as the primary creators and "routers" of information, the IoT becomes an ultra-efficient auto-organizing entity that handles all the myriad mundane details -- liberating human beings to focus on ideas. For this to happen, however, communication must take place on multiple levels, from the hardware that comprises the physical underpinnings of the IoT -- the internal computing parts inside each device -- to the communications protocols and methodologies that links from device to device and from the device to the cloud and back.

How Google Humanizes Technology in the Workplace And You Too, Can
Trends like these not only suggest that we're allowing technology to dehumanize us, our incessant connection distracts us from remaining present with other people, our work, and from sustaining any meaningful flow in our lives. Using the occasion of the Internet’s silver anniversary as an inflection point, I reached out to Google Human Resources Director, Dr. Todd Carlisle, to see if his firm has learned to more successfully utilize and integrate technology and even re-humanize it in their workplace. Here are five of his most useful insights:

eBook: Leveraging Cloud and Mobile
Spend on cloud and mobile will dominate technology investments for finance departments this year, but while the potential ROI in those areas is huge, so are the risks. By now most companies have adopted some cloud systems, and the good news is the process of implementing these solutions has gotten easier and more predictable. Unfortunately, for some organizations the process still has unexpected but significant complexities. Mobile is also on track to reach new productivity heights over the next two years, but CFOs still have concerns, particularly about device security management.

Big Data: A Misguided Critique
Here are the "problems" they have with big data, along with my responses. Although big data is very good at detecting correlations, especially subtle correlations that an analysis of smaller data sets might miss, it never tells us which correlations are meaningful. This is the worst. The example offered: From 2006 to 2011, the US murder rate was well correlated with Internet Explorer's marketshare. Correlation, but evidently no cause. Here's a news flash, guys. That's not a problem with big data. If it's a problem at all, it's a problem with statistics. A fundamental challenge in statistics is extracting cause from correlation.

NASA Releases 1,000 Apps To Public
Software makes up about a third of reported NASA inventions each year, and by publishing a software catalog the agency hopes to increase the ability of others to make use of its software significantly, said Daniel Lockney, who manages NASA's Technology Transfer Program. The TTP, which oversees the agency's intellectual property and the transfer of technology for commercialization and public use, is part of the agency's Office of the Chief Technologist. "Traditionally our [apps] were distributed at different offices and labs around the country. So we needed to gather everything in one place," said Lockney in an interview with InformationWeek Government.

The onus is on IT to improve perceptions around IT culture
"The culture surrounding how IT and the rest of the business relates to one another is becoming increasingly divided," said panel member Vivek Bhaskaran, founder and executive chairman of web-based research technology company, Ideascale & Survey Analytics. "We still have way too many companies that view IT as a set of administrative tasks that they are spending way too much of their budgets on." ... The disconnect between these perceptions and what departments think IT is in the business of, can stand in the way of innovation, Bishof said.

Law Firm CIO Makes the Case for Microsoft Lync
"People don't even realize it's a Lync phone system," he says. "The core infrastructure is functional. We've had over 30,000 minutes of conference calls on those phones without people realizing it." It is what Leung calls the "phone+" features - like the capability to seamlessly go from a call to a conference call to a video call to whiteboard functionality - that still need work, he notes. The features work, but are not always easy to find without some training. "The phone+ functionality, it's not as intuitive as I would have wanted," he says.

Quote for the day:

"I never learned from a man who agreed with me." -- Robert A. Heinlein

April 09, 2014

Plenty of drivers to craft a hybrid cloud strategy, but caveats too
Unless an organization's systems of record and systems of engagement are fully on-premises or completely in the cloud -- and few are strictly one or the other at this point -- that organization is operating in an environment that requires a hybrid cloud strategy. Hybrid cloud management -- a balancing act that combines the safety of keeping sensitive data on-premises and taking advantage of scalability and agility -- is becoming increasingly important to IT leaders.

Users face serious threat as hackers take aim at routers, embedded devices
Routers and other embedded devices have not been on attackers' radar until now, at least not on a significantly large scale. That's starting to change and if the attacks observed this year are any indication, it might be happening at a faster pace than manufacturers can react. Because routers can affect all other local devices that access the Internet through them, they are a rich target, said Trey Ford, global security strategist at security firm Rapid7, via email.

Eight (No, Nine!) Problems With Big Data
Is big data really all it’s cracked up to be? There is no doubt that big data is a valuable tool that has already had a critical impact in certain areas. For instance, almost every successful artificial intelligence computer program in the last 20 years, from Google’s search engine to the I.B.M. “Jeopardy!” champion Watson, has involved the substantial crunching of large bodies of data. But precisely because of its newfound popularity and growing use, we need to be levelheaded about what big data can — and can’t — do.

The IT operations side of acquisitions: Look to the cloud for ERP alternatives
The plot thickens when you are talking about disharmony in major systems that engage every level of a company, such as enterprise resources planning (ERP). ERP is a corporate "drive chain" system starting with the planning of product requirements in sales and engineering, which in turn dictate the activities of purchasing and manufacturing, which are then linked back into corporate financial and service functions. When two organizations operate two different ERP systems, achieving a "smooth operational landing" in a merger can quickly turn into a nightmare.

Why Every Data Architect Should Be An Analyst First
Data architects need to walk in the shoes of an analyst. Data architecture is no longer only about the technology you implement, it is about creating solutions for analysts and consumers of data. If you can’t think like an analyst or business user, you can’t know what they need. It is time to get educated on using data vs. educating the business on data technologies. The best way to do this is to experience what it takes to be a data scientist, business or operations intelligence analyst, or customer analyst.

3 Compelling Steps to Align Business Strategy with IT
IT managers do comply with the constantly changing external environment that keeps the organisation on its toes, demanding continuous evolution to adapt to the growing market demands. Besides this, the change should be in sync with the regulatory compliance framework. IT managers agree that technology plays an important role in driving competitive advantage; and that it is the only lever available to the enterprise that helps it scale up its business. But the big question is: ‘How does an enterprise extract the most out of IT? And why is it important to align IT with business?

After HIPAA Omnibus Rule 2013: How to implement continuous compliance
To create a culture of continuous compliance, healthcare organizations need to build comprehensive compliance plans based around any relevant HIPAA obligations, which means getting a grip on documenting compliance controls and figuring out how to maintain that documentation. Outlining each element of the HIPAA Security Rule and documenting specific business practices will hopefully develop a shared understanding within the organization of the processes that enable HIPAA compliance.

The 'always-on' IT culture: Get used to it
Not every IT professional is as accepting as Meadows of the growing demand for around-the-clock accessibility, whether the commitment is as simple as fielding emails on weekends or as extreme as attending an impromptu meeting in the middle of the night. With smartphones and Web access pretty much standard fare among business professionals, people in a broad range of IT positions -- not just on-call roles like help desk technician or network administrator -- are expected to be an email or text message away, even during nontraditional working hours.

Freescale Unveils ARM-Based SoCs for SDN, NFV
The demands these trends are putting on networks create the need for SoCs that are programmable, armed with accelerators and can support such protocols as OpenFlow for SDN, according to Freescale officials. SDN and NFV offer the promise of networks that are more programmable, flexible and automated by putting much of the network intelligence now found in the hardware into software. However, just as important is having hardware that is optimized for these new models, according to Tom Deitrich, senior vice president and general manager of Freescale's Digital Networking group

Distributing Complex Services in Cross-Geolocational IDCs
All distributed systems with data in different areas face challenges in data consistency, availability and partition tolerance, and according to CAP theorem we cannot satisfy all three. We do single write multiple read: we have pre-defined master write nodes, and we make all the write nodes in one SET - we call it the data source SET. Whenever a data source is generated, a sync is triggered in our distribution system (we call it the sync center), which syncs the write operation to all other IDCs in China, and this same operation gets executed in every single SET, too. So we are not syncing data, but duplicating user operations, so the process would be faster.

Quote for the day:

"An overburdened executive is the best executive, because he or she doesn't have the time to meddle" -- Jack Welch

April 08, 2014

Yahoo email anti-spoofing policy breaks mailing lists
The specification introduces the concept of aligned identifiers, which requires the SPF or DKIM validation domains to be the same as or sub-domains of the domain for the email address in the "from" field. The domain owners can use a DMARC policy setting called "p=" to tell receiving email servers what should happen if the DMARC check fails. The possible values for this setting can be "none" or "reject." Over the weekend Yahoo published a DMARC record with "p=reject" essentially telling all receiving email servers to reject emails from yahoo.com addresses that don't originate from its servers, Levine said.

Scientists apply physics to biology to create uncrackable encryption scheme
The way your heart and lungs interact is an example of “coupling functions;” both organs carry out separate jobs to keep you alive, yet they must also communicate back and forth with each other -- cardiorespiratory interactions -- to coordinate their rhythms. The paper on Physical Review X included this handy-dandy visual aid. “Here we offer a novel encryption scheme derived from biology, radically different from any earlier procedure,” stated Dr. Stankovski. “Inspired by the time-varying nature of the cardio-respiratory coupling functions recently discovered in humans, we propose a new encryption scheme that is highly resistant to conventional methods of attack.”

Microsoft Shows Off 'Power Of The Cloud' With Azure Servers
This is the sort of thing that Microsoft has been talking about since the Xbox One reveal, but we’ve yet to get much of an idea of how it will work when the rubber hits the road. The video below is a demonstration of two high-end gaming machines, one of which is connected to Azure’s cloud server, one of which isn’t. When the Microsoft presenter starts loading the scenario up with some complex physics, the unconnected machine struggles to maintain framerate while the connected one clips along at 32 fps. It should be noted that this is not Xbox One footage, but rather a PC prototype. The recording is courtesy of Arekkz Gaming.

All that a CIO needs to know about CRM was said already by the Dalai Lama
There is no beginning or end to the Magic Quadrant – it is not a cycle with a beginning, middle and end. It is not a novel or story with character, setting, plot, problem and resolution neatly bent around a beginning, a middle or an end. Nor are the dots random positions of Brownian Motion. Positions grow, decline, evolve based on the readiness of the market and the prowess of the software suppliers and the consultancies and integrators to bring the vision into reality. And here the thoughts that I heard long ago from the Dalai Lama, who will be 80 next year, are helpful.

Entrepreneurship Always Leads to Inequality
Inequality, in the broadest sense, is precisely, and perhaps paradoxically, what entrepreneurship is all about: entrepreneurs use their wit and grit to burst into new markets and generate extraordinary wealth, sometimes very quickly, more often over decades. Along the way, entrepreneurship rewards smart and risk-tolerant investors (who helped build the success) with wildly above-market (read: unequal) financial returns. The most successful entrepreneurship is disruptive — a term entrepreneurs these days have donned as a magic mantle: “We have a disruptive business model, a disruptive technology, and will disrupt the market” goes the startup pitch.

Microsoft shows off next-gen Windows for connected cars
Microsoft has been in the automotive space for a very very long time—probably more than 15 years, according to Steve Teixeira, who works in the developer division at Microsoft. A good chunk of cars on the road run either Windows CE or Windows Automotive, including BMW, Fiat, Ford, Kia, and Nissan. Now, Microsoft is prepping yet another version, Teixeira revealed at last week’s Build event. The company has already tested its new version of Windows for the car, both in simulators that model eye-tracking, as well as in actual cars in a local Seattle raceway.

How MDM works -- or doesn't work -- for SMBs
Right off the bat, things are tricky given that smaller companies often implement BYOD since they can't afford to provide employees with devices. "In some ways, it changes the landscape a little bit, because users may be hesitant to allow corporate control of their devices," says Tyler Shields, lead mobile analyst for Forrester. "But if you propose the trade off as, 'If you want access to sensitive material, you have to have MDM,' the user will almost always accept MDM on there for the convenience." With BYOD in place, SMBs either opt for endpoint security or simply ask that employees have "something on their devices, some sort of security," adds Shields.

The Science and Art of Customer Matching for MDM
The best customer MDM systems do not exist in a vacuum. They are continually updated with the latest and greatest data available, whether that be from a customer change request, an internal CRM system or a partner data feed. But in order for this data to be meaningful and accurate, it must be integrated with existing data so as not to create duplicates or apply updates to the wrong record. The challenge with customer MDM is that names are not unique. In addition, persons may change their name and customers may shift addresses.

China obtains patent concessions in return for approving Microsoft-Nokia deal
China's commerce ministry, however, fears the patent enforcement could go too far. Because Microsoft is entering the smartphone business, the company has the incentive to raise its patent licensing fees as a way to stifle the competition. Android makers could be forced out of the market, or pass the costs on to the consumer, the ministry added. To prevent the patent abuse, Microsoft has promised it won't use so-called "fundamental patents" to seek a product ban on Android handset makers. Nor will the company seek to increase their patent licensing fees following the acquisition.

Modern C++ and Visual Studio
One of the features that Modern C++ offers is simplified (from the programmer’s perspective) memory management when using new-> make_unique or new->make_shared. No need for delete, automatic lifetime management exception-safe. Another area is how values types are handled more efficiently for move operations. C++11 added the idea of moving object-like types. Building on this approach, the ability exists to take ownership instead of making copies that have to then be deleted. The improved move semantics can improve the speed of legacy code simply by recompiling with C++14 capable compiler.

Quote for the day:

“Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.” -- Robert Louis Stevenson

April 07, 2014

Dutch government pays millions to extend Microsoft XP support
The move by the Dutch government follows a similar deal the software giant struck with the United Kingdom government. It was announced last week that the UK government agreed to pay more than £5.6 million to Microsoft to continue its support for Windows XP by one year. The deal is expected to see Microsoft provide security updates for XP, Office 2003, and Exchange 2003 software being used on UK public sector PCs. The UK government said it expects the majority of its organisations to migrate away from the XP platform by April 2015.

Benefits of video conferencing include less travel, but it's not No. 1
For decades, enterprises have turned to video conferencing in large part as a means of reducing business travel expenses. However, a recent survey by Duxbury, Mass.-based Wainhouse Research of 4,700 end users of video conferencing found that the incentives for using video are shifting: 94% noted that the biggest benefit was increased efficiency and productivity; 88% cited increased impact of discussions; and 87% said video expedited decision-making -- the same percentage who said it reduced travel. The survey was included in a whitepaper sponsored by video conferencing vendor Polycom.

Ride the commodity IT wave by attempting bold tech strategies
Rather than owning a complex and expensive infrastructure to support back office IT functions, they can now be purchased at commodity prices, often an order of magnitude less expensive than traditional, in-house enterprise software. In the past few years, it has become possible to build a large company IT infrastructure without purchasing hardware, software, or the internal resources to maintain that infrastructure. This has often been regarded as a cost-saving maneuver, or in some cases as a threat to existing IT staff, since their jobs can now be sent "to the cloud.

6 ways the Internet of Things will transform enterprise security
Over the next few years, analysts expect tens of billions of devices to be connected to the Internet in similar fashion. The so-called Internet of Things (IoT) phenomenon promises, or threatens, depending on your point of view, to transform our understanding of the Internet and a networked world. A lot of what will transpire will be on consumer-oriented products. But as with everything in technology, what happens in the consumer world will inevitably affect the enterprise. Here in no particular order are six ways the Internet of Things will affect enterprise security:

Supplier innovation: Becoming the customer of choice
In today’s competitive supply markets, the challenge for buying organizations is to make themselves as “attractive” as possible to innovative suppliers, so that they — rather than their industry rivals — get first refusal on new ideas and product enhancements. Attractiveness in this context goes beyond order volumes and the amount of money a customer spends with a supplier each year (although these things are, of course, important) and into areas such as how willing the customer is to listen to ideas, how quickly they make decisions, the extent to which they share development risks/costs, and their effectiveness in commercializing new products.

Microsoft to restore Start menu to Windows
"I'm not here to announce the next version of Windows," Terry Myerson, the head of Microsoft's operating systems engineering group, said at Build. "But I am going to share that we are going all in with this desktop experience to make sure your applications can be accessed and loved by people that love the Windows desktop." Myerson showed off two features of the unnamed update to Windows 8.1: A Start menu and windowed "Modern," ne "Metro," apps on the desktop. Both had been rumored to be coming to a future version of Windows; those claims first surfaced in December 2013.

Bug Fixing Vs. Problem Solving - From Agile to Lean
One of the misconceptions I’ve made while working with software development teams using agile methodologies is that I initially confused bugs with problems ... now believe that our agile team producing bugs was not a Lean system producing learning opportunities : it was a team having quality problems, which is something I have seen with many teams. The goal of this article is to describe how my thinking has been evolving on the topic of bugs and problems, provide some hints on how to better understand the problems causing bugs in order to improve the performance, and put this into perspective with some real life stories.

Six impossible things Satya Nadella has already done
Microsoft is enjoying a resurgence that many attribute to its new CEO. Satya Nadella is certainly galvanising the company, and the enthusiasm of product teams at the recent Build 2014 conference was noticeable. But for those who have tracked his career at Microsoft, the fact that Nadella's second month in the CEO seat sees the company's stock price climbing high isn't out of step. Like the White Queen, Nadella has been associated with a few things usually considered impossible at Microsoft.

Software-based routers on x86 servers are becoming reality
The concept of software-based routers has been around for well over a decade. The latest versions of software-based routers have been hardened via years of experimentation and deployment. Open source communities, including Quagga and Brocade's Vyatta, have been developing software routing. In addition, advances in server hardware performance mean that more routing functions are now in scope.

5 Steps To Become A Digital Business
Any digital business is still a work in progress. Chances are your company wasn't born digital like Amazon, but chances are also good that, even in slow-moving industries like construction, you'll become the next Borders if you don't adjust to the way customers use digital products and services. Many companies have no problem looking and feeling digital -- a mobile app here, a redesigned website there -- but the real challenge is being digital. That means using technologies like cloud, mobile, and agile development to create better customer experiences that become revenue.

Quote for the day:

"Every exit is an entry somewhere else." -- Tom Stoppard

April 06, 2014

Cryptocat Sticks to Openness Despite Grief Over Audits
On Wednesday, Cryptocat's founder, Nadim Kobeissi, announced the release of two more code audits, both of which found flaws with the chat program that have now been mostly resolved. But the release of the audits fired up critics of Cryptocat, which is an easy-to-use instant messaging program that allows people without a background in computer security to exchange encrypted messages. The critics tend to use the audits as fuel to throw doubt on the viability of the project despite the fact that the project takes the audits seriously and quickly works on fixes.

How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion
Downey’s approach is to determine how the drop in religious affiliation correlates with other elements of the survey such as religious upbringing, socioeconomic status, education, and so on. He finds that the biggest influence on religious affiliation is religious upbringing—people who are brought up in a religion are more likely to be affiliated to that religion later. However, the number of people with a religious upbringing has dropped since 1990. It’s easy to imagine how this inevitably leads to a fall in the number who are religious later in life. In fact, Downey’s analysis shows that this is an important factor.

Public sector lacks IT skills to deliver services effectively
Mike Fetters, public sector director at totaljobs.com, said: “The public sector is filled with talented people, including IT professionals. But there is no denying that the last three years have been a tumultuous time, with widespread staff cuts and reforms by Whitehall affecting everyone in local government, central government and the NHS. “While there have been huge achievements in terms of reform implementation, those in the public sector are clearly worried about their ability to continue to deliver services. They have indicated that IT skills is an area in which they need more support.”

How to Protect Valuable or Personal Data on PC, Hard Drive and Flash Drive
Portable computers are taken everywhere: home, vacations, or business trips. It makes them an easy target for criminals, especially for the private data they contain. Flash drives are also an easy theft target. Even a failed hard drive that you send back to your vendor for warranty is a potential threat to your private intellectual property. How can your personal data be protected? With one word - encryption! Data encryption has gone mainstream with Windows BitLocker, an optional security feature that enables data protection on volumes with 128/256-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption.

Open-Office Backlash: Seeking Productivity in a Noisy World
“The open-office movement is like some gigantic experiment in willful delusion,” Jason Feifer of Fast Company wrote recently in an annoyed screed calling for offices for all. “Maybe we can spend less on space, the logic seems to go, and convince employees that it’s helping them.” In a New Yorker piece called “The Open-Office Trap,” Maria Konnikova reports on data point after data point detailing how far the open office has fallen out of favor with employees. The sound of fellow employees doesn’t foster a can-do spirit, but a get-me-out-of-here reaction: In a study conducted by Cornell University psychologists,

How Can Server Monitoring Improve Performance?
It’s important to maintain a careful watch over a company server as misuse of this technology can lead to data loss and it can incur financial costs. Server monitoring tools provide administrators with an easy way to maintain a vigilant approach as they provide alerts and function to keep the administrator up to date and abreast of any problems – potential or current. A network monitoring tool is a powerful application that can monitor bandwidth, availability and server performance monitoring.

Proposed health IT strategy aims to promote innovation, protect patients...
“The diverse and rapidly developing industry of health information technology requires a thoughtful, flexible approach,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “This proposed strategy is designed to promote innovation and provide technology to consumers and health care providers while maintaining patient safety.” Innovative health IT products present tremendous potential benefits, including: greater prevention of medical errors; reductions in unnecessary tests; increased patient engagement; and faster identifications of and response to public health threats and emergencies.

Indosat Routing Error Impacts Few but Hits Akamai, Chevron
The problem was quickly corrected but still caused problems for companies such as Akamai and Chevron, Zmijewski wrote. It also caused a flood of traffic to hit Indosat's network.ISPs and telecommunication providers publish public data on their networks that is used in routers to direct Internet traffic. That data is distributed to other providers using BGP (Border Gateway Protocol), a specification for exchanging such information. BGP data changes are "announced" and then picked up by other network providers. But errors in BGP data can cause websites and networks to be unreachable.

Say Hello to Microsoft’s Answer to Siri
Like Siri for iOS devices and Google Now for Android phones, Cortana can answer spoken questions like “How old is Barack Obama”; and it can act on commands such as “Wake me up at 7 a.m. tomorrow.” However, in a demonstration of the app given at Microsoft’s Build conference, Cortana appeared to be more closely integrated with other functions and apps on a device than its competitors. Unlike Siri and Google Now, it is possible for developers to write apps that can be controlled using Cortana. Cortana appears to combine design features of Apple and Google’s own virtual assistants. Cortana is similar to Siri in that you are encouraged to address the app as if it really had a personality of its own

Parliamentary computers crash 90 minutes after IT assurances
Users of the system repeatedly endured interrupted and slow internet access, delayed delivery of emails sent outside Parliament, and computers that kept freezing. Miller apologised for the problems, which resulted from an upgrade to the network. She said: “Unfortunately, in January, one of our suppliers involved in this upgrade inadvertently introduced an error into the supporting software. This had the opposite effect of that intended; that is, it reduced the capacity of the access to the internet.”

Quote for the day:

"I believe it is important for people to create a healthy mental environment in which to accomplish daily tasks." -- Darren L. Johnson

April 05, 2014

Rumored Android feature: Google Now Bill Pay
With the ability to add various bill payments to Google Wallet, you could then simply say "Okay, Google Now, pay Verizon bill," and Google Wallet would handle the rest. The big question... are we ready for that? Is the average user ready to hand over the payment of their bills to a service like Google Wallet? I think, yes. Why? Already an overwhelming amount of people pay their bills on line. According to Daily Finance, over 62% of Americans pay their bills online. Considering Google has gigantic plans for their payment system (including the ability to use your smartphone in place of your credit/debit card), there's no reason why your various bills could not be easily paid through their system.

Microsoft releases Windows Library for JavaScript as open source
The library features components that can help build the infrastructure of a Web app, such as data binding. It also offers advanced user interface controls and designs such as ListView, FlipView, animations and semantic zoom. Microsoft offers demonstrations of the various features, along with their implementation code, on the WinJS Preview Web site. Gusmorino admitted that work still needs to be done to make WinJS fully compatible with non-Microsoft browsers, such as Firefox and Google Chrome. Some work has already been done to allow WinJS to easily interoperate with other JavaScript libraries, such as Angular, jQuery, and Knockout.

Is Big Data Under Threat by New Internet Magna Carta?
The reputation of big data has suffered with the revelations by wistleblower Edward Snowden that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has been systematically using big data analytics to ‘spy’ on everyone’s communications as well as perform targeted surveillance of individuals and companies. We can all be certain that the U.S. is not the only government agency in the world to collect and use big data. For example, former French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said "Let's be honest, we eavesdrop too. Everyone is listening to everyone else. But we don't have the same means as the United States, which makes us jealous.”

XPocalypse Now: Security experts size up the cyberthreats
Windows XP users have managed so far to defend themselves with relative success, so what will be different once Microsoft support ends? Security experts predict a couple of scenarios. The more ominous is that attackers have already developed an arsenal of Windows XP “zero day” exploits, and they’re just waiting until Microsoft support ends to unleash them. While the deadline makes for good drama, some security folks reject the notion that attackers are lying in wait. “If the ‘apocalypse’ were going to happen, don’t you think it would have already happened?” says Andrew Storms, director of DevOps for CloudPassage.

The Truth About Clouds And Data: Can Your Storage Survive Climate Change?
The agility of modular, “grow-as-you-go” storage goes beyond flexible capacity. You can see it in operational efficiency. In days of yore (and maybe even in your days), companies were forced to use proprietary hardware solutions found in legacy storage: solutions that only allowed them to run one application at a time per physical server. Scalable environments, on the other hand, not only use industry standard hardware for just-in-time scaling, but also provide intelligent software to simplify and even automate many operational tasks, including reallocation. This allows providers to run different workloads on shared infrastructures. Such an environment can move with your data, and not just grow with it. Now isn’t that much more cloud-like?

To Motivate Employees, Apply This Scientific Rule Of Leadership
Employees who are selected, oriented, and reinforced properly, and who are surrounded by peers of the same caliber, will thrive when given significant autonomy. Otherwise, they’ll wither. There are dozens of studies to support this, inside and outside of business life. (You may prefer the term “empowerment” to autonomy. That’s fine. I think “autonomy” is the better word because it’s scarier, more blunt. And if what I’m talking about here doesn’t make an old-style autocrat at least a little nervous, then I’m not getting the point across.)

Technology Makes a Difference for Location Analytics
A look at the capabilities necessary for effective location analytics indicates why tools designed for the purpose get better results. More than three in five organizations said three basic capabilities are important: geographic representation of data, visual metrics associated with locations on a map, and selecting and analyzing locations on a map. ... All of these basic capabilities are the building blocks for conducting specific analytics that can identify or recommend actions from the mashup of data about a location or to provide insights to guide decisions based on location-specific indicators.

Putting the 'B' in BRM
The challenge: Justify to the senior management committee the expense of business relationship management (BRM) within the IT function. Now, there are many ways to do that. All the tools for assessing value can be drawn upon. There's the balanced scorecard, ROI, maturity models (with key performance indicators) and assessments against them, surveys, IT investment ratios, IT productivity over time. All very plausible, given the right circumstances. But as CIO, I knew that I had to do more than show that BRM made compelling sense from a stockholder perspective. I also had to show how its success would be measured over time.

Health Information Technology Safety: Where the Feds Will Focus
The federal government, in its new report on creating a risk-based regulatory framework for health information technology, focuses on the functionality of HIT products, not the platform whether it be cloud-based, installed or mobile. Consequently, the framework from the Food and Drug Administration, Office of the National Coordinator for HIT and Federal Communications Commission identifies three categories of functionality: administrative, health management and medical device functions.

Seven Steps to Create an Unbeatable Enterprise Mobility Strategy
Mobility is transforming our lives. How we bank, shop, entertain, travel, learn, make decisions, and work. We’ve gone from a world that had only 500 million telephone lines in 19901 to one in which there will soon be more active cell phones than people. And as billions of sensors and devices intelligently connect to form the Internet of Things, we’ll access all manner of smart products and services via mobile technology and applications. But, are you ready for the mobility revolution? Consider the following questions to ask:

Quote for the day:

"Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions. This is a dangerous mistake." -- Peter Drucker

April 04, 2014

How Do You Evaluate a Data Scientist?
Good data scientists will not just address business problems; they will pick the right problems that offer the most value to the organisation. It is essential for a data scientist to understand the domains of programming, machine learning, data mining, statistics, and hacking--in the positive sense. These are keys to getting in and grabbing the data one needs. A good data scientist needs to understand his domain, whether it’s science, engineering or business. He needs to be able to cut through the myths associated with big data.

Seven Steps to Create an Unbeatable Enterprise Mobility Strategy
An enterprise mobility strategy is less about managing mobile devices and more about being an advocate for the business—enabling the business to integrate and deliver new and innovative business services more quickly. It is more about enabling and accelerating new windows of opportunity and efficiencies and less about restricting access and choices, which can have the unintended consequence of slowing business down. Even so, security remains fundamental to making these new and innovative business services possible.

Key Considerations in Establishing a Chief Data Office
Many organizations are setting up centralized data management departments. These departments may be called Enterprise Data Management, Enterprise Information Management or the Chief Data Office. Whatever they are called, these departments are accountable for getting their organizations to treat data as an enterprise asset, they share some common characteristics and they increasingly report into the business rather than IT.

Yorgen Edholm of Accellion, on the Motivation of Passion
You can’t have people who are afraid of making mistakes. In high-tech, there are no templates. And when you have no templates, you can’t think that with the right time and resources, you’ll have a 95 percent chance of success. We can’t have people who approach problems by thinking, “If I can’t guarantee success, it’s going to hurt me.” The idea is not to celebrate mistakes, but to be somewhat tolerant of them. Whenever something unexpected happens in a big company, that’s not a good thing.

Competition from FinTech startups keeps big suppliers on their toes
The large suppliers are even asking Barclays for advice on how to become more agile after the bank launched it mobile service PingIt in just seven months. “We have articulated the model as to how we acted as a startup internally to disrupt ourselves and we’re starting to industrialise that,” said White. “I can count five large technology companies all of the names you would imagine have come to Barclays and have asked how we are doing it,” he said. Alistair Grant, EMEA CIO at Citi has also noticed how startups are keeping the big suppliers on their toes.

Financial firms and social media remain top Phishing targets
Social networks were the top Phishing target in 2013, with nearly 36 percent of the overall volume, which makes sense given that those attacks often have a goal of propagation. If a person's social presence is compromised, then their friends and any associated accounts (especially if they recycle passwords), such as email, are likely to fall too. On the other hand, financially-based Phishing attacks were also popular last year. Kaspersky says that nearly 23 percent of the year's Phishing attacks targeted the financial sector globally.

API testing ensures smooth sailing for SOA enterprises
API testing at the integration level is where the application consuming the service is examined. Various scenarios should be investigated to ensure caching or interpretation issues, for example, don't arise. While manual testing is encouraged, Dan said it's not always a viable method for service and API testing, particularly at the service function level. "A service is something more than a way to process information," Dang said. "A way to process that information is always by some kind of data going in and some sort of response coming back."

Twitter uses code refactoring to reduce risk and improve testing
One risk comes from overly large files. Large files should be broken up into multiple smaller ones when possible. Modifying these smaller files is less risky, said Ornelas, because there is less for a developer to keep in his head when working on them. Other risks relate to the separation of the groups working on the same file. Ornelas said other research has shown that as code is touched by a larger number of groups, the risks can go up. "The more cohesive your organization is with the code base, the better the quality of code," he said. If a lot of different teams are modifying a single file, it probably means something is wrong.

How to keep the rush to cloud from clouding enterprise judgement
In many ways, cloud represents a step backwards from a decade of work to bring applications and systems together within a common, standardized framework. The authors point out that architecture -- service-oriented architecture -- is taking on an even greater urgency as enterprises latch onto "legacy clouds." While not mentioned specifically in the article, many cloud services are now criss-crossing enterprises in spaghetti-like fashion, used and paid for by lines of business outside of IT. There is no doubt plenty of money being spent on services that are either duplicated or going virtually unused.

Interview with Tobias Mayer about the People’s Scrum and AgileLib
The people’s Scrum by Tobias Mayer is a collection of essays based on material written by him between 2005 and 2012. The essays describe agile ideas and practices, examples of the topics covered are self-organizing, team working, craftsmanship, technical debt, estimation, retrospectives, culture and Scrum adoption. InfoQ interviewed Tobias about the importance of people, teams and self organization with Scrum and about AgileLib.net, a new initiative for sharing agile resources.

Quote for the day:

"There is a difference between knowing the path & walking the path." -- Morpheus

April 03, 2014

Public Wi-Fi speeds to get a boost from Qualcomm's new antenna technology
On Thursday, Qualcomm announced radios for network equipment that can send three or four data streams as well as chipsets for mobile devices and consumer electronics with up to two streams. The number of streams decides the maximum theoretical speed, and two streams are capable of transmitting more than 600Mbps (bits per second), Qualcomm said. A version of MU-MIMO that can receive one stream is already integrated with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 801 processor, which powers smartphones including the HTC One M8, Samsung's Galaxy S5 and the Z2 from Sony.

5 Steps to Choosing a Gamification Platform
When valued customer visiting cards and buy-9-get-1-free engagement techniques are not enough anymore, many business owners are at a loss how to grow and develop their loyalty programs or engage their long-time employees. Gamification platforms are developed by companies specializing in user engagement. They can make the life of a non tech-savvy owner much easier by centralizing and organizing all engagement efforts. However, new engagement solutions seem to be popping up every day.

White House-MIT Big Data Privacy Workshop – Top Researcher Reports
Due to the massive scale of Big Data, previously top-down solutions for security, e.g., anticipating and preventing security breaches, will simply not scale to Big Data. They must be augmented with new approaches including bottom-up solutions such as Stonebraker’s logging to detect and stem previously unanticipated security breeches and Weitzner’s accountable systems. “Big data” has rendered obsolete the current approach to protecting privacy and civil liberties[1]. Hence, Big Data requires a shift from a focus on top-down methods of controlling data generation and collection to data usage.

Emergent Leadership Topples the Pyramid
Anyone who has been a member of a high performing team knows that leadership flows among team members, depending on who has the needed skills, knowledge or attitude in the moment, and that at various times each team member significantly influences the team. A team that is dependent on one person will never fulfill its full potential. Over the years, I have asked hundreds of people to list the top five qualities of a high performance team, and “shared leadership” is always on the list. Perhaps you agree emergent leadership can work for a team, but think it’s not possible for a complex organization. Actually, the idea of a non-hierarchical company is not far-fetched at all.

Top Trends in Cloud Innovation
Most of the providers today only do a piece of the needed puzzle – just SFA or just HR. And most only offer cloud, so using them requires a “rip and replace” approach. At SAP we realize that most companies have existing software assets that are working well for them. Hybrid solutions will be the norm, and we’re perfectly situated to take advantage of that trend. It’s just one of the reasons our cloud solutions have been growing at more than 160% year over year.

How Boeing is using the cloud
This week at Interop, Boeing’s chief cloud strategist, David Nelson, outlined a couple of ways the aircraft manufacturer is not only using the public cloud, but combining that that with on-premises virtualized workloads to create a hybrid environment. The results are applications that Nelson says run more efficiently, are less expensive and serve the needs of Boeing better than if the company had done it all in-house. Nelson first described an application the company has developed that tracks all of the flight paths that planes take around the world. Boeing’s sales staff uses it to help sell aircraft showing how a newer, faster one could improve operations.

How Employee Engagement Can Improve a Hospital's Health
For healthcare providers and their employees, ongoing uncertainty can lower employee engagement, which in turn can have a negative effect on organizational success and patient care. Research by Gallup and Loma Linda University Medical Center shows that employee engagement and employee safety work together to enhance patient safety. When healthcare employees work in a safe environment and are engaged, the chances are much greater that they will perform activities that are known drivers of patient safety outcomes better.

Medical Software Brings Intuitive Interface To Health Records
Understanding the importance of the user interface was one of the things Cane learned at his previous company, Blackboard, which he co-founded in the late 1990s. Blackboard became one of the leading e-learning and education technology companies. Cane left in 2009 after moving back to Florida, where he had grown up. While he was between ventures, his wife told him he needed to take time to get a thorough physical, which in turn led to a referral for a skin check. That was how he met his co-founder, dermatologist Michael Sherling.

Enterprise cloud outlook: Inevitably hybrid, surprisingly agile and (eventually) cheap
For all its promise and potential, the cloud still remains a relatively immature market. Major players such as Google and Amazon have both slashed on-demand prices in the past couple weeks as infrastructure providers race to lock down top-tier enterprise customers through a variety of pricing and service options. This sorting out of the how and the how much is exactly the kind of thing that keeps some CIOs on the sidelines. "The cloud will be way, way cheaper than on-premise within five years or so," said Amr Awadallah, Cloudera's chief technology officer. "There's no doubt that this will be much cheaper in the future, but it's still not cheaper today."

Are Enterprises Leveraging M2M Technology?
Are enterprises willing to go the IoE way? What would be the requirement for enterprises to adopt IoE? Does t make sense for enterprises to bank on the new technology trend? The list goes on. We spoke to IT heads to understand how they are planning to exploit the technology in coming days. Subhamoy Chakraborti, General Manager – IT, Magma Fincorp , says, “We are definitely looking forward to adopt IoE. We have around 280 branches and most of our assets are managed manually. There is a lot of scope in our organization. We are looking forward to automation in a big way. In the future, we plan to embrace machine to machine communication for our field work as well.”

Are You Dutiful or a Disruptor? Career Advice for the Innovator in All of Us
The greatest innovations are inherently disruptive and the sub-trait of disrupting underlies all of the discovery skills. In a Forbes piece, “Disruption vs. Innovation: What’s the difference?” author Caroline Howard wrote, “Innovation and disruption are similar in that they are both makers and builders. Disruption takes a left turn by literally uprooting and changing how we think, behave, do business, learn and go about our day-to-day.”

Quote for the day:

"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant." — -- Max DePree

April 02, 2014

GRC regulations force cloud services providers and customers to adapt
"With increased legislation around data privacy, the rising threat of cybertheft and the simple requirement to be able to access your data when you need it, organizations need to know precisely to what extent they rely on cloud storage and computing," Durbin said. Compliance regulations, for example, often have very specific requirements for what data needs to be stored, and where. Emerging privacy rules require certain data management processes. And of course, rapidly advancing cyberthreats from a variety of sources require cutting-edge information security tools.

Dell's new research division wants computers to detect your mood
The mood experiments are among others underway at Dell Research that stretch across four broad areas: security, data insights, mobility and the Internet of Things, and cloud and modern data centers, according to Jai Menon, a vice president and Dell's chief research officer. Dell's focus on moods and emotions will use a person's brain waves combined with heart rate, pulse or other body functions in hopes of detecting when a person is happy, sad, anxious, fearful or has other feelings, Menon said in an interview.

Microservers: What you need to know
Microservers are a new category of system designed to shine when carrying out these well-defined computing workloads. The need for microservers has in part been fuelled by the growth of the web and online services. That's because the demands that serving this kind of content place on a system — the CPU load and I/O required to deliver static elements for a web page, for example — is predictable. The quantifiable nature of these workloads allows microserver circuitry to be pared back to what's needed to execute these tasks.

CIOs: It’s time to prepare for bring your own smart machine
According to Gartner Inc. analyst Tom Austin, there are three classes of smart machines: The doers, the movers and the sage. It’s that last category CIOs will need to pay attention to, which includes both virtual personal assistants and smart advisors, such as IBM’s Watson. Virtual personal assistants will learn what you do, who you work with and what you’re working on. Smart advisors, on the other hand, are subject-matter experts that will, say, help a doctor recommend medical treatment. Both are poised to push their way into the enterprise in the next two years, according to Austin.

Why CIOs Should Look Outside for Data Expertise
Predictive scores include fraud scores (who is trying to scam us?), churn scores (who is most likely to cancel?), social influencer scores (which customers affect peers' behavior?), wealth scores (what is the predictive buying power of my consumers?), shopper scores (who are discount shoppers vs. full price?), and recommendation scores (which offers should be sent to which consumers?). At the council meeting, Barbara Wixom, an expert in business intelligence at MIT's Center for Information Systems Research, offered other examples of companies getting data and analytics from external providers--either while they build their internal capacity or in lieu of doing so.

SQL Server Execution Plans, Second Edition
An execution plan describes what's going on behind the scenes when SQL Server executes a query. It shows how the query optimizer joined the data from the various tables defined in the query, which indexes it used, if any, how it performed any aggregations or sorting, and much more. It also estimates the cost of all of these operations, in terms of the relative load placed on the system. ... Grant Fritchey is a SQL Server MVP with over 20 years' experience in IT including time spent in support, development, and database administration.

Google seeks Supreme Court review of Wi-Fi packet sniffing ruling
Google in its appeal to the Supreme Court does not, however, accept that the collection of the data was illegal, pointing out that the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission declined to take enforcement action after investigating Google, including for possible violations under the Wiretap Act. The company said in its appeal that an adverse ruling could in fact hurt security professionals who routinely use the same kind of technology as Google's Street View cars did to collect packet data in order to secure company networks.

A CTO reflects on VDI implementation trials and errors
The promise is compelling. As a result, I have experimented with virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Sometimes, my experiments succeeded. Other times, they never advanced beyond experimentation. What was the difference? As I reflect back on my VDI implementation successes and failures, this is what I have learned: The business case is exciting but ambiguous. There are hard dollar costs and benefits but those are sometimes dwarfed by the more nebulous costs, benefits and considerations.

CFOs could be technology evangelists, if they took the plunge
There is a weight of expectation on the chief financial officer (CFO) of most organisations, and that they should be in the front line of driving changes in the structure of IT. The problem is that only about a fifth are actually doing it. That's one of the conclusion of a new report into the changing role of the CFO compiled by Oracle and Accenture. The report found that some two thirds (65 percent) of C-suite executives in large organisations believe that CFOs should be "strong evangelists for the transformation potential of technology".

eXtreme Programming The Methodology
The biggest advantage the customer liked about eXtreme Programming in this case was the flexibility to change the prioritization and stories within the Iteration. Scrum for the most is in-flexible on this front. By letting the customer have the flexibility greatly reduced their stress from planning the perfect iteration. From the team’s perspective, the biggest advantage was the reduction of time for planning. Again, in Scrum, the planning meetings can go for an entire day if you are planning a four week iteration. But, since the iterations in Extreme Programming are much shorter and flexible, the planning is fairly quick – less than 45 minutes in this case.

Quote for the day:

"The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize." -- Robert Hughes