Dealing with the data deluge, and putting the 'information' back into CIO
Dealing with data overload is an appropriate challenge for the CIO. As Gavin Megnauth, Group CIO at Impellam, pointed out: "We are called Chief Information Officers — but taking that title literally, it's worth asking ourselves whether we are spending the appropriate amount of time managing unstructured company information in particular." Megnauth said that while big data is this year's hot topic, with much focus around business intelligence, data warehousing and analytics, an overlooked area is ensuring that unstructured data can be used for business advantage.
Yahoo email encryption standard needs work
Some of Yahoo's HTTPS email servers use RC4 as the preferred cipher with most clients. "RC4 is considered weak, which is why we advise that people either don't use it, or if they feel they must, use it as a last resort," Ristic said. Other servers, like login.yahoo.com, primarily use the AES cipher, but do not have mitigations for known attacks like BEAST and CRIME, the latter targeting a feature called TLS compression that login.yahoo.com still has enabled.
Optimizing the Use of Technology for Business
In 2013 many organizations made progress in balancing technology decisions across business and IT as the lines of business continued to take leading roles in investment and prioritization. Major investments were made in business applications using software as a service, business analytics and mobile computing applications. In some other areas of innovation, particularly big data and social collaboration, deployments are just beginning to happen and a significant amount of projects are in experimental and proof of concept than enterprise use.
Set up a PC as a kiosk using Windows 8.1's Assigned Access
Windows 8.1's new Assigned Access feature allows you to configure a local user account to essentially function in kiosk mode, and it doesn't even require you to edit the registry or dedicate a PC to the task. Once you configure an Assigned Access account, a user signed on to that account only has access to the one Modern app that you specify -- the user cannot run any other application or make any changes to the operating system. Other users can sign on to the computer and have full access to Windows 8.1.
Tracking Sensors Invade the Workplace
As Big Data becomes a fixture of office life, companies are turning to tracking devices to gather real-time information on how teams of employees work and interact. Sensors, worn on lanyards or placed on office furniture, record how often staffers get up from their desks, consult other teams and hold meetings. Businesses say the data offer otherwise hard-to-glean insights about how workers do their jobs, and are using the information to make changes large and small, ranging from the timing of coffee breaks to how work groups are composed, to spur collaboration and productivity.
Why Smart Leaders Are Loosening the Reins
Happily, some smart business leaders have begun to figure out that what worked in the industrial age has no place in the ideas economy. Over the course of writing The Talent Mandate, I surveyed more than 100 senior executives about their talent practices. Only 11 percent of them believe that traditional command-and-control structures are still the best way to derive value from employees. What I have learned from these leaders and the scores of others I interviewed is that when it comes to managing talent in today’s vastly changed environment, it makes sense to loosen the reins.
The art of conversation: Using contextual data to deliver on your intent
Some companies believe real-time decisions are only nice-to-have. These companies may script conversations in advance. If so, all their conversations are like the one above. It may occasionally work, but only when they talk to customers that don't tell them anything new. How likely is that with customers continuously adding to high velocity big data? Every interaction in every channel, every tweet and post, every change in physical location can all become relevant to the current conversation.
Network security spending to surge in 2014
Spending on network security, which represented 21 percent of the total security spending pie in 2013, is expected to increase in 2014 as enterprises increasingly look to thwart breaches and attacks. According to a Forrester Research survey of more than 2,000 security pros, 46 percent of companies expect to increase network security spending in 2014. Forrester noted that companies are deploying a Zero Trust security model that requires the verification and security of all resources, limits on access and constant monitoring and logging of traffic.
Exclusive Guide: Energy Essentials for the Modern Data Center
You’re not alone. Traditional infrastructures weren’t designed to power today’s new workloads and, as a result, IT managers have been forced to take a closer look at their data center designs. To help support your efforts, the editors at SearchDataCenter.com have compiled a comprehensive guide that outlines current energy concerns, latest techniques for improving power and cooling and tips to understanding – and reducing – consumption in the data center.
Preparing for Your First MongoDB Deployment: Backup and Security
The intention of a Defense In Depth approach is to layer your environment to ensure there are no exploitable single points of failure that could allow an intruder or untrusted party to access the data stored in a MongoDB database. The most effective way to reduce the risk of exploitation is to run MongoDB in a trusted environment, to limit access, to follow a system of least privileges, to follow a secure development lifecycle, and to follow deployment best practices.
Quote for the day:
"Don't be encumbered by history. Go off and do something wonderful" -- Robert Noyce
Dealing with data overload is an appropriate challenge for the CIO. As Gavin Megnauth, Group CIO at Impellam, pointed out: "We are called Chief Information Officers — but taking that title literally, it's worth asking ourselves whether we are spending the appropriate amount of time managing unstructured company information in particular." Megnauth said that while big data is this year's hot topic, with much focus around business intelligence, data warehousing and analytics, an overlooked area is ensuring that unstructured data can be used for business advantage.
Some of Yahoo's HTTPS email servers use RC4 as the preferred cipher with most clients. "RC4 is considered weak, which is why we advise that people either don't use it, or if they feel they must, use it as a last resort," Ristic said. Other servers, like login.yahoo.com, primarily use the AES cipher, but do not have mitigations for known attacks like BEAST and CRIME, the latter targeting a feature called TLS compression that login.yahoo.com still has enabled.
In 2013 many organizations made progress in balancing technology decisions across business and IT as the lines of business continued to take leading roles in investment and prioritization. Major investments were made in business applications using software as a service, business analytics and mobile computing applications. In some other areas of innovation, particularly big data and social collaboration, deployments are just beginning to happen and a significant amount of projects are in experimental and proof of concept than enterprise use.
Windows 8.1's new Assigned Access feature allows you to configure a local user account to essentially function in kiosk mode, and it doesn't even require you to edit the registry or dedicate a PC to the task. Once you configure an Assigned Access account, a user signed on to that account only has access to the one Modern app that you specify -- the user cannot run any other application or make any changes to the operating system. Other users can sign on to the computer and have full access to Windows 8.1.
Tracking Sensors Invade the Workplace
As Big Data becomes a fixture of office life, companies are turning to tracking devices to gather real-time information on how teams of employees work and interact. Sensors, worn on lanyards or placed on office furniture, record how often staffers get up from their desks, consult other teams and hold meetings. Businesses say the data offer otherwise hard-to-glean insights about how workers do their jobs, and are using the information to make changes large and small, ranging from the timing of coffee breaks to how work groups are composed, to spur collaboration and productivity.
Why Smart Leaders Are Loosening the Reins
Happily, some smart business leaders have begun to figure out that what worked in the industrial age has no place in the ideas economy. Over the course of writing The Talent Mandate, I surveyed more than 100 senior executives about their talent practices. Only 11 percent of them believe that traditional command-and-control structures are still the best way to derive value from employees. What I have learned from these leaders and the scores of others I interviewed is that when it comes to managing talent in today’s vastly changed environment, it makes sense to loosen the reins.
The art of conversation: Using contextual data to deliver on your intent
Some companies believe real-time decisions are only nice-to-have. These companies may script conversations in advance. If so, all their conversations are like the one above. It may occasionally work, but only when they talk to customers that don't tell them anything new. How likely is that with customers continuously adding to high velocity big data? Every interaction in every channel, every tweet and post, every change in physical location can all become relevant to the current conversation.
Network security spending to surge in 2014
Spending on network security, which represented 21 percent of the total security spending pie in 2013, is expected to increase in 2014 as enterprises increasingly look to thwart breaches and attacks. According to a Forrester Research survey of more than 2,000 security pros, 46 percent of companies expect to increase network security spending in 2014. Forrester noted that companies are deploying a Zero Trust security model that requires the verification and security of all resources, limits on access and constant monitoring and logging of traffic.
Exclusive Guide: Energy Essentials for the Modern Data Center
You’re not alone. Traditional infrastructures weren’t designed to power today’s new workloads and, as a result, IT managers have been forced to take a closer look at their data center designs. To help support your efforts, the editors at SearchDataCenter.com have compiled a comprehensive guide that outlines current energy concerns, latest techniques for improving power and cooling and tips to understanding – and reducing – consumption in the data center.
Preparing for Your First MongoDB Deployment: Backup and Security
The intention of a Defense In Depth approach is to layer your environment to ensure there are no exploitable single points of failure that could allow an intruder or untrusted party to access the data stored in a MongoDB database. The most effective way to reduce the risk of exploitation is to run MongoDB in a trusted environment, to limit access, to follow a system of least privileges, to follow a secure development lifecycle, and to follow deployment best practices.
Quote for the day:
"Don't be encumbered by history. Go off and do something wonderful" -- Robert Noyce
