Category: News

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…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Skytap, Inc., the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions, today announced that their resident cloud computing experts will be sponsoring and providing demonstrations at upcoming industry events in August and September, including Agile 2013, VMworld, and STARWEST. In addition, Brian White, vice president of products at Skytap, will be giving a feature presentation at CAMP IT in the Chicago area on September 25, providing insight into how an organization can choose between a public, private, or hybrid cloud computing solution.

Agile 2013 When: Mon. August 5 to Fri. August 9 Where: The Gaylord Opryland Hotel & Convention Center, Nashville, TN Description: Agile 2013, the leading Agile development and testing conference, gives attendees unrivaled insight into the latest innovations and trends, including updates on Agile approaches, methods, technologies, tools, leadership principles, management philosophies, and processes. Conference attendees will also be kept up to date with the most recent in policies, theories and research. Stop by the Skytap booth or the Skytap sponsored beer garden for a look at how organizations can use cloud computing solutions to further accelerate their agile development and testing cycles through scalable, flexible infrastructure…

Grazed from TechNewsWorld. Author: Ed Moyle.

By now, most organizations have adopted cloud. Increased and widespread adoption as well as expansion of existing deployments are reflected in surveys such as the 2013 Future of Cloud Computing Survey from North Bridge Venture Partners and GigaOm. This suggests that if you’re a technology pro and your organization is like most, you’ve already spent considerable time addressing how to field cloud in a secure way.

As critical as it is to ensure initial secure cloud adoption, it’s important that organizations understand it’s a first step along a longer path. After the push to deploy securely has come and gone, there will still be longer-term activities that remain to ensure that a system stays secure. It’s with this longer "stretch" of maintenance and support that many organizations struggle…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Michelle Simpson.

If you need to back up the files that you have in your computer, you may want to make use of the power of the internet to store and back up your data. With cloud storage service providers such as Dropbox, Google Drive and Mega, it is now easier than ever to have a digital storage on the internet. Although you still have the option to use traditional means of backing up files using CDs, hard drives and flash disks, there are several conveniences offered by cloud storage solution that you may want to benefit from. Here are several advantages to using cloud storage solutions:

You Get Storage Space that Grows with You Needs
Unlike with directly using hardware for storing your data, the capacity of your cloud storage can be easily adjusted depending on your needs. You can choose a storage allocation according to the amount and type of files that you intend to store online. If you only need to store some of your PDF documents, you only need a small storage space which may not even necessitate you paying for the service. This is because most cloud service storage providers offer free storage space for their users…

Grazed from ITPro. Author: Simon Brew.

It’s brought cloud storage to the masses, but is Dropbox a lifesaver or a threat? Simon Brew has been taking a look… For IT departments, the problem used to be external files brought in to the workplace from home on a floppy disk. Then there was the rise of the USB memory stick. These devices had a habit of housing not only Powerpoint presentations that had been sweated over into a business environment, but also a veritable collection of nasties that may have assembled on said worker’s computer.

It was a scary time, and it’s hard to find an IT manager who doesn’t still break out in a cold sweat when a USB key is produced. However, the USB pen drive appears to have had its day, thanks to the rise of cloud services, like Dropbox…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Eight out of 10 enterprise Software-as-a-Service buyers will not be happy with the contracts they sign. And there’s good reason for that. That’s the prediction from Gartner analyst Alexa Bona, who chides the current state of contracts, which all too often "have ambiguous terms regarding the maintenance of data confidentiality, data integrity and recovery after a data loss incident."

Bona outlines three options enterprise cloud buyers need to exercise every time they cut a cloud agreement:

Bring in third-party verification. SaaS contracts should "allow for an annual security audit and certification by a third party, with an option to terminate the agreement in the event of a security breach if the provider fails on any material measure," Bona advises…