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A Linux user tries out Windows 10
I did the unthinkable – left Linux behind and lived in the Windows 10 technical preview as my primary computing environment. Here's what I learned. Read More
WEBCAST: Aerohive
Gigabit Speed Wireless Networks with 802.11ac
With the development of 802.11ac, WLANs surpass the gigabit speed barrier. Watch this webinar recording featuring author of "802.11ac: A Survival Guide" (O'Reily), Matthew Gast, for a discussion on 802.11ac and why it's posed to become the 802.11 standard of choice and how to incorporate it into your network plans. View now>>
WHITE PAPER: Aerohive
BYOD and Beyond: How To Turn BYOD into Productivity
One of the most overlooked aspects of the BYOD phenomenon isn't just connecting the users to the network, but how to manage them once they're there. Getting mobile and BYO devices onto the network is now table stakes. View Now
Comcast gets defensive with 2-Gig fiber service, Gigabit Pro
Comcast just announced it will offer a 2 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) residential service called Gigabit Pro in Atlanta next month. That's four times faster than Verizon Fios and twice as fast as Google Fiber. It looks like Comcast is tapping into its large, 145,000 route miles of fiber core network that hauls television and consumer and commercial internet.With more than 1.5 million of Comcast's 22 million subscribers in the Atlanta area, it's a smart but defensive move. Google and AT&T are both planning on bringing Gigabit service to the Atlanta area later this year at about $70 per month, putting pressure on Comcast's top-end 505 Mbps Xfinity internet service that Ars Technica reported will be priced at $399 per month. Ars also reported that Comcast's 505 Mbps customers will be upgraded to the multi-gigabit service at a price below $399. The high-priced offering was possible without competition. Now with competition, the company needs to increase the speed by four times and decrease its monthly price from one third to one sixth.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Read More
Mistakes that betrayed anonymity of former DEA agent and Silk Road investigator
Wow, just wow; it might be weird to suggest a 95-page criminal complaint (pdf) is good read, but you might feel like you watched some cybercrime drama show after reading about the scheming and alleged crimes of a former DEA Special Agent and a former U.S. Secret Service Special Agent who were part of the Silk Road and Ross Ulbricht, aka Dread Pirate Roberts, investigation.Instead of writing “alleged” 50 times to describe one of the scumbags completely corrupt agents, just assume all of this describes mere allegations. Additionally, some italics were added to emphasize specific points.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Read More
IDG Contributor Network: What can you do when the insider threat is IT itself?
IT is charged with keeping threats at bay, from both traditional external hackers and, increasingly, company insiders. One insider that is too often overlooked is IT itself. Look around your IT department - can you trust every single person there?It turns out that a notable portion of insider breaches come from technical staff: 6% from developers and another 6% from admins, according to the latest Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report. The report shows that many of these breaches come from privilege abuse, although there are still plenty of other techniques IT staffers use. Great importance should be given to the moral character of your IT admins, after all, they do hold a lot of power at their fingertips, especially when a sizeable chunk of the business goes through IT systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Read More
Broken NFC terminals, lack of retail support stifling Apple Pay usage
Apple Pay got off to a hot start after its debut in October, attracting 11% of all credit card-using households and converting 66% of iPhone 6 users in its first four months on the market, according to an ongoing study of more than 3,000 credit card users conducted by market research firm Phoenix Marketing International.Although iPhone users appeared eager to try out Apple's new mobile payment plan – the study estimates that more than 88% of those who set up an Apple Pay wallet went on to make a purchase with it either in a retail store or in a mobile app – they have run short on opportunities to use them in the time since."The demand is there: 59% of Apple Pay users have gone into a store and asked to make a purchase with Apple Pay," Greg Weed, Phoenix Marketing International director of research, said in a statement. "But so is the disappointment: 47% visited a store that was listed as an Apple Pay merchant only to find out that the specific store they visited did not accept (or were not ready to accept) Apple Pay."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Read More
Windows Server 2003 support ends in 100 days, and many don't even know
There are now just a little over 100 days left until July 14, when Microsoft will end support for Windows Server 2003. That means no more patches at all, just like with Windows XP last year.And a lot of people don't even seem to know it.After July 14, "Microsoft will no longer issue security updates for any version of Windows Server 2003. If you are still running Windows Server 2003 in your datacenter, you need to take steps now to plan and execute a migration strategy to protect your infrastructure." That comes right from the company.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Read More
WHITE PAPER: Aerohive
10 Requirements for Optimizing Your Network for Mobility
Today the vast majority of work and communication is conducted on mobile & wireless devices & users rarely even consider using a wired network unless it's a last resort. This paper looks at how this mentality requires IT operations to architect an access network specifically with "mobile first" in mind. Read now
Acer Chromebook 15 review: Massive display, with mixed results overall
Over the past few months I've had the opportunity to review two laptops. Both of them being… rather beefy: the Chromebook Pixel and the Dell M3800. These two machines are powerhouses – sporting extremely high-resolution screens and high-end processors – with price tags to match. But then, this past week, the delivery man dropped off an entirely different category of laptop: the Acer Chromebook 15.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Read More
Apple details secret history behind the Apple Watch
The Apple Watch is unquestionably Apple's biggest gamble in years. Not only does the device represent a new product for Apple, it represents an entirely new product category altogether. With the device slated to launch in just about three weeks, all eyes will be watching closely to see if Apple has truly delivered yet another revolutionary product.Ahead of the highly anticipated Apple Watch launch, Wired today posted an exhaustive recap of the Apple Watch development process, which began in earnest shortly after Steve Jobs' passing. Apple decided to make a watch and only then set out to discover what it might be good for (besides, you know, displaying the time). “There was a sense that technology was going to move onto the body,” says Alan Dye, who runs Apple’s human interface group. “We felt like the natural place, the place that had historical relevance and significance, was the wrist.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Read More
How Congress enables fraudulent TurboTax e-filing for stealing tax returns
This is certainly not Intuit's year, although it's hard to feel sorry for a company whose wounds are self-inflicted. First came the uproar over charging for what had previously been free features. Now the issue of crooks stealing the refunds rightfully owed to other people is coming to a head.The problem has been known for a while, but it exploded 2,300% last year. Several states stopped taking e-filings from TurboTax due to hoaxers stealing the refunds. And it's not chump change, either. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that in the 2013 filing season, the IRS blocked $24.2 billion in fraudulent refund requests and paid out another $5.8 billion in refunds that later proved fraudulent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Read More
IDG Contributor Network: Have you been hacked? Two ways to find out
It doesn't stop. Around 28,000 accounts from the fan-site forum ThisHabbo and details on 40,000 users of the Swedish forum Flashback were made public recently, according to website Have I Been Pwned?ThisHabbo is a radio-oriented site, and Flashback, from a books and magazines publisher, is supposedly the largest forum in Sweden.Forum data breaches might have you wondering – just how does one go about finding out if their account or email address is among those that have been leaked?Am I on the list? Obvious website defacing by hactivists can be relatively easy to spot—your website changes, or files get deleted. Banking hacks are also pretty easy—unauthorized charges start sucking your bank account dryer than it was before.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Read More
How Security-as-a-Service can save an organization millions
In my 25+ years in IT, I have seen the outsource/insource pendulum swing back and forth. One of the popular arguments in favor of outsourcing is that it can save an organization dollars in total cost of ownership. In my experience, that is not always the case. But now Forrester has completed a study that says outsourcing Security-as-a-Service could help a company save millions of dollars over a period of three years.The Forrester study was commissioned by Alert Logic, a managed cloud security firm (full disclosure: I have consulted for Alert Logic, but had no involvement in this study). While the study is specific to Alert Logic solutions around log management, threat management, and web application firewall (WAF), it could just as easily be applied to any MSSP, Security-as-a-Service provider.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Read More
WHITE PAPER: Dell Software
12 Questions to Ask When Choosing an AD Bridge Solution
Learn key questions to ask when evaluating Active Directory bridge solutions, and explore how Dell offers ideal solutions to meet your challenging needs. Learn more.
More corruption by Silk Road Task Force ex-feds accused of stealing $1 million
Like you’d see in the movies, if a person has perpetrated a heist then don’t go on a huge buying spree such as paying off your home mortgage, listing your “net worth in excess of $1 million” when purchasing a company franchise, opening Scottrade and E-Trade accounts, or writing checks payable to “cash.” Someone is likely to grow suspicious about potential ill-gotten gains if your bank accounts reflect a huge amount that cannot be explained by your salary. Yet this was what former DEA agent Carl Force did, according to the criminal complaint (pdf).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Read More
Encryption: The security market's newest frontier
In response to the mind-numbing, never-ending reports of data breaches in the news, I am seeing a distinct move to data encryption as the latest best hope for information security. While encryption is certainly not new and is far from a panacea, the notion that my data is protected even if I am breached or compromised is appealing to many.Two companies I have spoken with recently are riding this wave in raising VC money and gathering big-name clients. While both are in the encrypted data market and both have Israeli roots, they are actually not very competitive with each other. They play in different areas of the encryption game.The first company is Secure Islands. Founded by brothers Aki and Yuval Eldar, two veterans of the Israeli tech scene, Secure Islands has a patented and patent-pending group of technologies that make up IQProtector. IQProtector offers Data Immunization, which in the Secure Islands view includes three logical stages:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Read More
Why HBO partnered with Apple for HBO Now
During Apple's most recent special event, the company announced that HBO Now, a new HBO service which doesn't require a cable TV subscription, would premiere on Apple TV.In the days that followed, it was discovered that HBO Now will be an Apple TV exclusive for three months, after which the service will be opened up to other media platforms. Still, with HBO seemingly not needing Apple to get a foothold in the living room, one has to wonder why and how Apple was able to secure a 3 month exclusivity arrangement.Addressing this very topic, HBO CEO Richard Plepler explained as much during a Tuesday interview with CNBC.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Read More
'Largest DDoS attack' in GitHub's history targets anticensorship projects
GitHub has been hammered by a continuous DDoS attack for three days. It’s the “largest DDoS attack in github.com's history.” The attack is aimed at anti-censorship GreatFire and CN-NYTimes projects, but affected all of GitHub; the traffic is coming from China as attackers are reportedly using China’s search engine Baidu for the purpose of “HTTP hijacking.”According to tweeted GitHub status messages, GitHub has been the victim of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack since Thursday March 26. 24 hours later, GitHub had “all hands on deck” working to mitigate the continuous attack. After GitHub later deployed “volumetric attack defenses,” the attack morphed to include GitHub pages and then “pages and assets.” Today, GitHub said it was 71 hours into defending against the attack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Read More
IDG Contributor Network: Low-power chip will last decades on a battery
For years we've been obsessed with increasing chip processing power. Intel's i386, launched in 1985, followed by the i486 in 1989, introduced economical multitasking and number crunching to the enterprise.In the following years, the chips got more powerful still, culminating with today's hundred-dollar smartphone threatening the PC.It could be argued that we've reached an acceptable level of multitasking and personal computing power for cost. We've found it in small-form-factor smartphones, and it may be all we really need now.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Read More
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