Month: April 2015

Grazed from CCI. Author: Nick Pollard.

The technology increases efficiency by removing the need for physical infrastructure, but cloud contracts can present significant practical obstacles to incident response (IR) strategies. When a security incident happens, the speed at which the breach is identified is integral. The faster the response, the more quickly infectious malware can be halted, access stopped, sensitive data protected, and the threat remediated.

This makes a significant difference in controlling risk, costs, and exposure. But in a cloud world, the challenge arises when a company wants access to the servers that infrastructure is based on. Often, data centre providers will not allow a business to get into these, making it impossible to know where the attack is coming from…

Grazed from TechCrunch. Author: Ross Momtahan.

One of the rare occasions that the subject of data centres has ended up in the mainstream news was fairly recently, when Facebook built a new data centre in Sweden. It was a precious moment when our industry – which despite being responsible for so much cool stuff in the world is not exactly considered to be the most glamorous to the average Joe – was seen on the likes of Gawker and the Mail Online.

Of course, the Facebook factor is a strong reason for this public interest – but there is something inherently… cool… about building a data centre in such a remote location (not to mention the green credentials). But Facebook isn’t doing this for the PR; it sees real potential for savings in this region…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Nathan Eddy.

Legacy security systems and practices are often not sufficient to protect companies’ expanding use of cloud and mobile technologies, according to a CompTIA study. Malware and hacking are still the top threats causing concern, with nearly half of all companies citing these as serious concerns.

"One of the most important things that small businesses can do is to form a policy around security," Seth Robinson, senior director, technology analysis, CompTIA, told eWEEK. "Only 44 percent of SMBs say that they have a comprehensive security policy in place. The key part in forming a policy is having discussions across an organization to ensure that everyone is on the same page."…

See more at: http://www.eweek.com/small-business/cloud-mobile-technology-complicating-it-security.html#sthash.Pt7aQWV1.dpuf

Grazed from TechCrunch. Author: Catherine Shu.

Cloud computing giant Salesforce has acquired Toopher, an Austin, Texas based security software startup. The news was announced on Toopher’s site and confirmed to TechCrunch by Salesforce. Terms of the deal were undisclosed. According to Toopher’s post, the company has stopped selling its products as its team prepares to join Salesforce.

“We are thrilled to join Salesforce, where we’ll work on delivering the Toopher vision on a much larger scale as part of the world’s #1 Cloud Platform. We can’t imagine a better team, technology and set of values with which to align,” wrote founders Josh Alexander and Evan Grim…

Read more from the source @ http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/01/toopher-salesforce/

Grazed from CloudTech.  Author: James Bourne.

A report from United Software Associates (USAIN) has found MongoDB to be top of the pile of NoSQL database providers in benchmark testing.  The research tested three leading products – Cassandra, CouchBase and MongoDB – through Yahoo!’s cloud standard benchmark, YCSB. USAIN wanted to assess the durability of each, going on the theory that most applications should prioritise durability over performance, not accepting data loss. The databases were put through the ringer on three types of performance metric; throughput optimised, durability optimised, and balanced.

In workload A of 50% read and 50% update with throughput optimised, under the YCSB benchmark MongoDB hit 160,719 operations per second, ahead of Cassandra (134,839) and Couchbase (106,638). With workload B’s 95% read and 5% update, MongoDB again came out on top with 196,498, ahead of Couchbase (187,798) and Cassandra (144,455)…

Grazed from Business2Community.  Author: Ian Moyse.

2015 is rumoured as the tipping point for cloud. For the last four to five years, we have heard that cloud (Internet-delivered solutions) is about to go mainstream, however, this year it is not the hype, but real user benefits that are driving adoption

What do I mean by this. Well people are not going out looking for cloud-based solutions (“I want some cloud”), instead they are looking for a solution to a real problem. Some users are unknowingly using a cloud-based solution (either in their business or personal lives) and are quickly seeing the benefits. Take for example Dropbox, a free tool for sharing (large) files across devices seamlessly, easily and from anywhere, where users adopt it from a need that it solves and not because of the technology factor behind it or because of any cloud hype…

Grazed from ITBrief.  Author: Catherine Knowles.

In order to stay ahead of the game, businesses need to keep pace with the rapid evolution of cloud computing, leverage cloud investments to connect with customers and employees, and seize opportunities available from cloud technology, says KPMG.

KPMG, the global advisory organisation, has released its 2014 Cloud Survey Report, and shares insights on cloud computing for today’s businesses.
A primary finding of the survey is that, "Cloud has clearly come of age. Driven by the demand for speed, flexibility, scale and anywhere access, consumers have fully embraced a cloud-enabled world…