IT spending reality check: 2014's mixed message

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Date: Oct 30, 2014 1:56 PM
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CurrentC already hacked Tim Cook: 'I'm proud to be gay' Network World Daily News PM October 30, 2014 IT spending reality check: 2014's mixed message Tech budgets and hiring are down from earlier optimistic projections, but IT's confidence is holding steady. READ MORE   Issue highlights 1. CurrentC already hacked 2. Tim Cook: 'I'm proud to be gay' 3. IDG Contributor Network: Just where are the world's hackers located? 4. Guinness World Record: Amplifier operates at a speed of one trillion cycles per second 5. Microsoft releases stopgap POODLE protection for Internet Explorer 6. Microsoft adds IoT, Big Data orchestration services to Azure 7. Drupal: If you weren't quick to patch, assume your site was hacked 8. Smartphone share of overall mobile phone sales stalling at 70 percent 9. Pirate Bay co-founder found guilty of hacking in Denmark 10. The Charge of the Troll Brigade: What to know about #GamerGate 11. Confidential business data at risk at the border WEBCAST: Flexera Software Application Delivery, Compatibility and Availability Flexera Software's AdminStudio and AppPortal helped Lucas manage the compatibility and availability of applications at his company. Find out how! Learn More>> CurrentC already hacked CurrentC, the mobile payment platform from MCX poised to take on Apple Pay, sent out an email on Wednesday indicating that it's already been hacked. While the only information compromised were customer email addresses, the news couldn't have come at a worse time for CurrentC which has been lambasted in the media in recent days.Over the past few days, both Rite Aid and CVS disabled support for Apple Pay across all of their nationwide locations. The reason? Both companies belong to a consortium of companies planning to rollout their own mobile payment platform dubbed CurrentC in early 2015. Naturally, Apple Pay fans, and otherwise champions of the free market, have been absolutely vitriolic in their hatred for CurrentC. Indeed, the service isn't yet even operational and the CurrentC app already has horrible 1-star ratings on iTunes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE Tim Cook: 'I'm proud to be gay' That Apple CEO Tim Cook is gay couldn't even be call called an open secret because it has been so widely understood and on several occasions reported. Yet Cook himself had never publicly acknowledged his sexual orientation.Today that changed.Writing himself – and eloquently -- on BloombergBusinessweek: For years, I've been open with many people about my sexual orientation. Plenty of colleagues at Apple know I'm gay, and it doesn't seem to make a difference in the way they treat me. Of course, I've had the good fortune to work at a company that loves creativity and innovation and knows it can only flourish when you embrace people's differences. Not everyone is so lucky.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE IDG Contributor Network: Just where are the world's hackers located? Here's a question I was asked recently by an IT buddy: where do hackers live? Where are they from?Well, new studies and reports have been bubbling up over the last month or so, and although I don't have a definitive answer, I can take a stab at answering his question.HistoryRumors have persisted for years that countries with good education systems but poor job prospects have been the ones that generated hackers. The kids are taught well about computers and the like, but when it comes time to enter the job market, there isn't any work, so they use their skills messing with computers and end up hacking.Nick Farrell, writing for IDG Connect earlier this year, says Bulgarians at the turn of the century used hacking to vent frustration at corrupt governments that had "ruined their lives" after the fall of communism. The kids tested their skills against foreign governments and others.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE WEBCAST: CDW Tiering Storage for Savings, Performance and Availability You are being buried by data. Multimedia including videos, audio and photos. Unstructured data in presentations, documents and social media feeds. Even the voicemails and databases that used to be the primary residents of your storage system are growing beyond your ability to manage them effectively. View Now Guinness World Record: Amplifier operates at a speed of one trillion cycles per second DARPA said today that a solid-state amplifier developed under its Terahertz Electronics program was recognized by Guinness World Records as the fastest ever recorded -- one terahertz (1012 GHz), or one trillion cycles per second—150 billion cycles faster than the existing world record of 850 gigahertz set in 2012. Northrop Grumman developed the amplifier known as the Terahertz Monolithic Integrated Circuit (TMIC) and said the device exhibits power gains several orders of magnitude beyond the current state of the art.+More on Network World: IBM/DARPA turn out brain-like 5-billion transistor superchip+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE Microsoft releases stopgap POODLE protection for Internet Explorer Microsoft on Wednesday gave Windows customers an easier way to block attacks against Internet Explorer (IE) meant to steal browser session cookies and impersonate victims.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 10 (FREE!) Microsoft tools to make admins happier Two weeks after Google researchers revealed the "POODLE" attack method and about the same length of time before Microsoft releases its next round of security updates, Microsoft offered one of its automated "Fixit" tools to disable SSL 3.0, an aged and vulnerable Internet encryption standard.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE Microsoft adds IoT, Big Data orchestration services to Azure Microsoft added three new big data services to its Azure cloud platform yesterday as part of its ongoing efforts to make Azure a leading platform for big data services and to make it ready to tackle the Internet of Things (IoT)."Every day, IoT is fueling vast amounts of data from millions of endpoints streaming at high velocity in the cloud," says Joseph Sirosh, corporate vice president of Machine Learning at Microsoft. "Examples of streaming analytics can be found across many businesses, such as stock trading, fraud detection, identity protection services, sensors, web clickstream analytics and alerts from CRM applications. In this new and fast-moving world of cloud and devices, businesses can no longer wait months or weeks for insights generated from data."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE WEBCAST: Dell | Symantec Solve Mobile Conflicts between IT and Users Effective mobile security does not have to be a battlefield between IT and users. Join this Webcast to hear how to strike a balance between users' mobile desires and IT's need for control Learn More. Drupal: If you weren't quick to patch, assume your site was hacked Users of Drupal, one of the most popular content management systems, should consider their sites compromised if they didn't immediately apply a security patch released on Oct. 15.The unusually alarming statement was part of a "public service announcement" issued by the Drupal project's security team Wednesday."Automated attacks began compromising Drupal 7 websites that were not patched or updated to Drupal 7.32 within hours of the announcement of SA-CORE-2014-005 - Drupal core - SQL injection," the Drupal security team said. "You should proceed under the assumption that every Drupal 7 website was compromised unless updated or patched before Oct 15th, 11pm UTC, that is 7 hours after the announcement."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE Smartphone share of overall mobile phone sales stalling at 70 percent Smartphones during the third quarter again accounted for about 70 percent of total mobile phone shipments. Prices need to fall even further to attract more users in emerging markets, but that won't happen overnight.Though the smartphone share of overall mobile phone sales increased year over year, it has been flat, sequentially, at around 70 percent for the last couple of quarters, according to Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics. For the smartphone share to increase, prices have to come down so more users in parts of the world such as Africa and India can afford them.Today the cheapest smartphones cost about US$35 at wholesale, but prices under $20 are needed. Getting there will take a couple of years, at least. "In the short term, the component cost, IPR costs and the software costs are too high for smartphones to compete at the very bottom end of the market, so feature phones aren't going away," Mawston said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE Pirate Bay co-founder found guilty of hacking in Denmark Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg was found guilty of hacking and serious vandalism in the Court of Fredriksberg in Denmark on Thursday.Warg was found guilty for hacking the mainframe of IT service provider CSC in Denmark. A 21-year old Danish man was also found guilty, as he acted as Warg's accomplice, according to the ruling. To protect the man's privacy, Judge Kari Sørensen, who presided over the case, ordered news outlets not to publish his name.Svartholm Warg's sentence will be announced on Friday at 1 p.m. local time, said Sørensen. She declined to discuss further details of the case over the phone.The prosecutor in the case is requesting a prison sentence of five years for Svartholm Warg.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE The Charge of the Troll Brigade: What to know about #GamerGate There are two ways to think about #GamerGate. The short version is that it's a loosely-organized mob of so-called "gamers" rallied around a Twitter hashtag focused on the harassment of women -- primarily, but not only, female game developers -- under the pretense of pushing for higher standards in video game journalism.  The longer story is that the #GamerGate hashtag has all but taken over a large and growing corner of the web, starting back in August, when a jilted ex-boyfriend wrote a long (seriously, it's basically a novel) blog entry accusing his former girlfriend, independent game developer Zoe Quinn, of cheating on him with a video game journalist (in the spirit of disclosure, that journalist is a friend of mine) in return for positive reviews of her games. Never mind that the journalist in question had never actually reviewed one of her games -- the witchhunt was on. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE Confidential business data at risk at the border Several recent court decisions have re­inforced the principle that government agents may examine laptops, cellphones and other electronic devices in the possession of people crossing the border into the U.S.--even when there is no suspicion of wrongdoing.Most border searches appropriately target serious crimes, such as terrorism and child pornography. But in light of the many international white-collar criminal investigations being conducted by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, this broad power to capture electronic data at the border poses a serious privacy risk for business executives and lawyers traveling to the U.S.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here READ MORE WHITE PAPER: iDashboards Dashboards for Government Policy Development Dubai Statistics Center specializes in collecting, analyzing and publishing statistical information and data for government leaders and the business community. Using this data as the basis of planning and decision-making, they sought a solution that would provide deeper insight into this information. Learn More SLIDESHOWS Ubuntu turns 10: A look back at the desktop Linux standard bearer A brief history of Ubuntu, as alliterative as all-get-out. JOIN THE NETWORK WORLD COMMUNITIES As network pros you understand that the value of connections increase as the number of connections increase, the so called network effect, and no where is this more evident than in professional relationships. Join Network World's LinkedIn and Facebook communities to share ideas, post questions, see what your peers are working on and scout out job applicants (or maybe find your next opportunity). Network World on Facebook Network World on LinkedIn MOST-READ STORIES of 2014 1. Tim Cook: 'I'm proud to be gay' 2. Cisco, others pushing 2.5G, 5G Ethernet 3. What it's like living on a Chromebook, Part 1 4. FBI: List of purchase order scam victims growing rapid 5. Microsoft 'almost' wraps up largest layoff 6. Lowe's ranked the best, Home Depot the worst in SECTF contest 7. Stealthy malware uses Gmail drafts as command 8. Windows 7 sales end this Friday 9. Internet2 slices network 10. 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