Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

According to Cnet security reporter Declan McCullogh, the FBI is pressuring telecom carriers (such as AT&T and Verizon) to install "port reader" software that would allow the agency to intercept and analyze entire communication streams in real time. Carriers seem to be resisting, but the FBI claims it has the right to do this under the Patriot Act. Although the recent NSA scandal has not been put to bed yet, most of us who deploy cloud computing technology have dialed that situation into our thinking.

However, this latest attempt to monitor electronic communications goes a bit further and creates more concern that moving data into the cloud means the government can leaf through your data willy-nilly. As I pointed out last week, U.S. cloud providers are already suffering from fears due to the NSA scandal. Many European companies are hesitant to use U.S.-based cloud services when they consider the risk that the U.S. government’s spying may come along from the ride…

Grazed from The Var Guy. Author: Editorial Staff.

IBM will furlough U.S. hardware employees to cut costs in late August and early September 2013. Employees will take a week off with one-third pay, Bloomberg reported. Ouch. The key takeaway: Cloud computing is squeezing IBM’s hardware business, and the value of IBM’s x86 server business could be falling — even more — each quarter.

First, the official news. Bloomberg reported:

"U.S. hardware employees, including those involved in development and procurement, will take a furlough week with one-third pay starting either Aug. 24 or 31, said Jay Cadmus, a spokesman for the Systems and Technology Group. Executives in the division will take no pay during the week…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: CJ Arlotta.

Many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) may not understand the differences between a backup and archive tool — so how should you explain it to them? Backup and recovery software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications solutions provider Backupify covered this discussion in a blog post, explaining why an SMB would need a backup solution, an archive solution, or both.

Backupify’s Sheila Lahar summed up the differences in a simple sentence: "Archiving is for discovery while backups are for recovery." Since Lahar’s memory trick may need a little more explaining, so she divided the article up into two sections: when to use an archiving tool and when to use an backup tool…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Rhonda Sherwood.

Is cloud computing the single greatest threat to your IT career? If the thought has crossed your mind, you’re not alone. Some in IT fear the cloud; others worry that it could be a threat to data security. But more and more organizations are realizing that it’s the smart way to go. And that means there’s a good chance you’ll soon be faced with the next step in your IT strategy: Taking your service-as-a-software solution to the cloud. Does that mean it’s time to rethink your career?

There are many misconceptions surrounding the cloud. But often they have more to do with concerns over job security than anything else. Hosting providers often get the same questions from IT managers: What will my department do once my company decides to take its email architecture and services to the cloud? If my organization hosts its SharePoint site with you, will my team become obsolete?..

Grazed from The Virtualization Practice. Author: Edward Haletky.

In many cases, when we mention Data Protection for the Hybrid Cloud, we are usually talking about backing up to the cloud. The cloud becomes a repository of our backup images and in some cases those backup images can be launched within clouds that use the same technology. Being able to send data to the cloud is becoming table stakes for infrastructure as a service (IaaS) data protection. However, once we move outside the realm of IaaS to Platform or Software as a Service (PaaS or SaaS), data protection is hit or miss.

Data Protection is a piece of the larger hybrid cloud security story as we discussed in Securing the Hybrid Cloud and as seen in Figure 1. In many cases Data Protection is used to transition virtual machines and data to the cloud, and in some cases back again. For this to work, the data protection tool must use an identity to contact the cloud, authenticate and authorize itself, then speak the appropriate API to move the data to the cloud. In most cases, the API used, is the one provided by the data protection tool. Yet the identity is the identity of the user with rights to access the data center as well as the cloud and is most likely an administrative user in both. That identity is controlled by just the use of user name, password, and perhaps a secondary password (or authentication key)…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Jiten Patil.

Having made it past the 2013 midpoint, it’s time for technology-driven and/or technology-enabled organizations to evaluate plans and review outcomes so far, look at what has changed in the industry or business landscape; and realign for what the rest of the year has to offer. Here are some checkpoint trends, observations and tips to help you review and adjust plans for rest of the year. These observations and suggestions are based on field work, intelligence gathered working with customers, partners, prospects and industry leaders.

Key Trends and Observations – Mid Year

1. The cloud market continues to be led by pioneers such as Amazon and Salesforce.com while Microsoft, VMware, Google and IBM (along with SoftLayer) have made positive headways. Other players such as Oracle, SAP, HP, Rackspace, Terremark and NetSuite are emerging as serious contenders…

Grazed from IEEE. Author: Davey Alba.

One thing is certain in this day and age: Somewhere out there, somebody wants your data. So how do you make sure all of it stays protected, especially now that ever more computing is done in the cloud? At MIT, researchers say they’ve designed a chip that solves this problem. They presented it last June at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture, in Tel Aviv. Dubbed Ascend, the component hides the way CPUs request information in cloud servers, making it immensely difficult for attackers to glean information about the data stored there. Such a hardware-reliant scheme is an unusual proposition in the realm of cloud security, which is dominated by software solutions.

The researchers assume that sensitive data on cloud servers is already encrypted—typically the first line of defense when it comes to data security. Ascend goes a step further, its designers say, by dealing with sneak attacks that can happen through various so-called side channels. In a side-channel attack, an observer measures things like computation time, memory traffic, and power consumption to infer the behavior of a program running on that hardware, and from that the watcher can glean some information…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Dan Sullivan.

Incidents of international cyberespionage, attacks on financial institutions and intellectual property thefts help maintain a steady stream of news about information security. Passwords and logins are not the raw material of headline grabbing stories, but they are the security issues IT professionals must face daily. The rise in adoption of cloud computing, Software as a Service (SaaS) and mobile computing has increased the complexity of managing users and their identities.

Security practitioners have spent decades developing methods for strong authentication to mitigate these risks that are easy to use and as secure as possible. Single sign-on (SSO) systems allow users to authenticate to a central application one time and then automatically authenticate to other applications and systems…

Grazed from The Var Guy. Author: Christopher Tozzi.

Rackspace (RAX), the server and cloud hosting vendor with a strong investment in OpenStack and other open source cloud technologies, continues to expand its educational initiatives around the open cloud. This week, it launches a new network operations class as a part of the curriculum at the Open Cloud Academy, a key part of the company’s efforts to train the next generation of IT professionals for the cloud.

The class, which begins Aug. 5, is an eight-week training program that grants certifications for network administrators, network operators and network engineers. It’s the newest addition to the lineup of professional training options available at the Open Cloud Academy, which also offers instruction in Linux system administration, software development and cyber security…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

CoreMatrix, a leading cloud computing consulting company, today announced that the retail industry is adopting cloud solutions to reduce infrastructure and computing costs as well as to engage consumers on social networks and gain a 360-degree view of their customers.

Many retailers have already embraced cloud computing, as evidenced by associates at brick & mortar stores using tablet computers to better serve customers and the increasing appearance of in-store kiosks enabling customers to access online product reviews and recommendations. In addition, cloud-based social log-in tools and other conveniences offer consumers an easier online shopping and buying experience…