Mobile payments more secure in the cloud
With cloud computing, mobile payments can be more secure, says Prashanth Ranganathan, director of mobile security and risk for PayPal. In a guest post on Forbes, Ranganathan writes that mobile payments managed correctly can actually increase the security of information from plastic credit and debit cards.
"The ‘digital wallet’ approach relies on the inherent security of the cloud," Ranganathan writes. "This is where a consumer’s financial information lives, not on their phone. They can access their ‘wallet’ anytime, anywhere, no matter what device they’re using, and they never have to worry when they switch devices or upgrade phones. Even if the phone is lost or stolen there’s no need to worry. Of course, we always recommend that our customers protect their phones with a PIN as a first line of defense."…
Panda’s Cloud Antivirus Gets Boost from Windows Azure
Panda Security and Microsoft have joined forces to provide antivirus as a service on Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform.
To kick off the collaboration, the pair is hosting a new version of the Panda Cloud Office Protection (PCOP) service on Azure. Panda’s service combines malware protection for PCs, servers, and notebooks with cloud-based management and signature updates.
In addition to malware protection for endpoints, Cloud Office Protection offers centralized device access policy enforcement. This helps close one of the most stubbornly persistent avenues of attack for malware: the USB port…
Mapping the Global Policy Environment for Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is the fastest-growing and most exciting new sector in the software and computing industries. IDC estimates that by 2015 revenue from public IT cloud services will account for one out of every seven dollars spent on commercial software, server, and storage offerings. Private cloud solutions could add another 10 percent or 20 percent to the market. And even more significant for the global economy will be the knock-on benefits that come from accelerating digital commerce and making robust technology solutions available to more users with greater cost efficiencies than ever before.
But in a first-of-its-kind study of the global policy landscape, BSA has come to the troubling conclusion that a patchwork of conflicting laws and regulations threatens to prevent the cloud computing market from reaching its full potential on a global scale. Above all, the BSA Global Cloud Computing Scorecard finds there is a pressing need for governments to better harmonize their policies to smooth the flow of data across borders…
SunGard Availability Services Expands Cloud Services Into Canada
SunGard Availability Services has expanded its Cloud Services to Canada with the launch of its first Canadian-based cloud computing delivery centre. The new cloud centre will offer SunGard’s Enterprise Cloud Services, a highly-secure, enterprise-ready cloud built for production environments, and Recover2Cloud(SM) for Vaulting, a fully managed Recovery-as-a-Service offering for applications running on physical or virtual platforms.
SunGard first launched its Enterprise Cloud Services and Recover2Cloud service in North America in 2011, but this opening marks the first instance of the SunGard Cloud on Canadian soil. The Enterprise Cloud Services in Canada are delivered by SunGard from its Mississauga, Ontario data centre with the resilient, enterprise-class Vblock cloud technology from EMC, VMware and Cisco…
Is Cloud Computing Right for Your Company?
The race for the best cloud computing service is heating up. Last week Apple revealed details on the newest version of OS X, the Mountain Lion, which boasts a more integrated iCloud feature. Not to be outdone, Microsoft caused a stir with the announcement of its new, tricked-out version of SkyDrive for Windows 8. The urge is to jump on the bandwagon and pick the best brand, but before you outsource your storage, it’s important to take stock of whether or not it’s right for your company’s needs…
Cloud Computing: Big Data-Toting Cyber-Security Posse Forming
Armed with $26 million of Warburg Pincus’ money, former McAfee CTO George Kurtz is going to try to stop the rape and pillage of corporate and government IP assets that’s going on.
Warburg, where Kuntz was briefly executive-in-residence, plunked the first round money into his stealth start-up CrowdStrike, which says it’s going to use Big Data technologies to stop the rampant thievery by identifying the perpetrator.
Building higher walls, Kuntz says, is useless. The "economic predators" – who may have already secretly modified key processes and data, and may eventually take down critical infrastructure – will just go get taller ladders…
Germany leads EU countries on cloud computing
Five EU countries rank among the world’s top ten for policies that promote cloud computing, according to a study published on Wednesday (22 February) by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), an ICT body representing Microsoft and other international software giants.
In third place, Germany was the highest rated country according to the BSA scorecard, which ranked 24 of the largest countries according to seven indicators, including data privacy, cybersecurity, cybercrime, intellectual property, technology interoperability and legal harmonisation, and IT infrastructure. France, Italy, the UK and Spain were all in the top ten, with Japan and Australia ranked first and second…
Cloud Computing: “OnLive Desktop Plus” Introduces World’s Fastest Flash Browsing… on iPad
OnLive, Inc., the pioneer of instant-action cloud computing, is pleased to announce the OnLive(TM) Desktop Plus service, bringing gigabit-speed(1) accelerated browsing with full Adobe(R) Flash(R) to devices with the OnLive Desktop App, regardless of the device’s local Internet speed and local computing capability, making OnLive Desktop Plus by far the world’s fastest mobile browsing experience, if not the fastest consumer browsing experience available on any device.
The free OnLive Desktop App, currently available on iPad(R) — and coming soon to Android(R), PC, Mac(R), TVs and monitors — delivers no-compromise, media-rich, instant-response Windows(R) applications including Microsoft(R) Word, Excel(R) and PowerPoint(R) software, and as of today, Adobe(R) Reader(R) for PDFs, along with 2GB of cloud storage. OnLive Desktop Plus, available for $4.99/month at desktop.onlive.com, provides all OnLive Desktop Standard features plus OnLive’s gigabit-speed accelerated browsing experience with full Flash player capability. With OnLive Desktop Plus, the iPad not only becomes 100% Flash compatible, it becomes the world’s fastest mobile Flash player…
Dimension Data debuts global cloud services to accelerate adoption of cloud computing
Dimension Data plc, an ICT services and solutions provider, unveiled Thursday a comprehensive range of cloud services aimed at making it easier for companies to accelerate their adoption of cloud computing. Available on a global basis, Dimension Data’s Cloud Services enable companies to be more agile, lower IT infrastructure management expenses and reduce cloud migration complexity and risk.
The global provider’s cloud offerings simplify planning, design, deployment and management of private, public and hybrid clouds. Dimension Data also introduced its Managed Cloud Platform, a global delivery platform for its cloud services, and Dimension Data CloudControl, its cloud management system that automates provisioning, orchestration, administration and billing…
Connectria’s Cloud Computing Ranks 2nd in North America & 4th Worldwide in Performance
Connectria Hosting, a global managed hosting provider, today announced that as of February 23, Connectria ranked an impressive 2nd in the North American market and 4th on a global basis in Cloud Computing Performance (over a 30 day period view) as measured by the Global Provider View on CloudSleuth.
Sponsored by Compuware, the technology performance company, CloudSleuth is the industry’s only partner-driven cloud performance community that fosters a collaborative exchange of strategies, best practices and resources for deploying and managing applications in the cloud. Connectria recently joined CloudSleuth in order to leverage its growing partner community. As part of its alliance with CloudSleuth, Connectria began participating in the Global Provider View, a free cloud monitoring service that objectively benchmarks page delivery performance and availability metrics of popular public cloud providers…