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The most common digital security technique used to protect both media copyright and Internet communications has a major weakness, University of Michigan computer scientists have discovered.
RSA authentication is a popular encryption method used in media players, laptop computers, smartphones, servers and other devices. Retailers and banks also depend on it to ensure the safety of their customers’ information online.
The scientists found they could foil the security system by varying the voltage supply to the holder of the “private key,” which would be the consumer’s device in the case of copy protection and the retailer or bank in the case of Internet communication. It is highly unlikely that a hacker could use this approach on a large institution, the researchers say. These findings would be more likely to concern media companies and mobile device manufacturers, as well as those who use them.
Andrea Pellegrini, a doctoral student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, will present a paper on the research at the upcoming Design, Automation and Test in Europe (DATE) conference in Dresden on March 10.
“The RSA algorithm gives security under the assumption that as long as the private key is private, you can’t break in unless you guess it. We’ve shown that that’s not true,” said Valeria Bertacco, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
These private keys contain more than 1,000 digits of binary code. To guess a number that large would take longer than the age of the universe, Pellegrini said. Using their voltage tweaking scheme, the U-M researchers were able to extract the private key in approximately 100 hours.
They carefully manipulated the voltage with an inexpensive device built for this purpose. Varying the electric current essentially stresses out the computer and causes it to make small mistakes in its communications with other clients. These faults reveal small pieces of the private key. Once the researchers caused enough faults, they were able to reconstruct the key offline.
This type of attack doesn’t damage the device, so no tamper evidence is left.
“RSA authentication is so popular because it was thought to be so secure,” said Todd Austin, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “Our work redefines the level of security it offers. It lowers the safety assurance by a significant amount.”
Although this paper only discusses the problem, the professors say they’ve identified a solution. It’s a common cryptographic technique called “salting” that changes the order of the digits in a random way every time the key is requested.
“We’ve demonstrated that a fault-based attack on the RSA algorithm is possible,” Austin said. “Hopefully, this will cause manufacturers to make a few small changes to their implementation of the algorithm. RSA is a good algorithm and I think, ultimately, it will survive this type of attack.”
The paper is called “Fault-based Attack of RSA Authentication”, and you can get it here. | <urn:uuid:0a63989d-a760-4191-93ef-2894e83a18dd> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2010/03/04/rsa-authentication-weakness-discovered/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501172831.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104612-00603-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947584 | 640 | 3.578125 | 4 |
More basic Linux commands you need to know for CompTIA’s new A+
Last month, we looked at some of the changes coming in the CompTIA A+ exams as they are being updated. The new exams (to be named 220-901 and 220-902) are expected by the end of the year and one of the topics being added is that of Basic Linux commands. Due to space constraints, approximately half of the commands were covered and this month we look at the rest of the basic Linux commands CompTIA wants you to be familiar with for the upcoming A+ certification exams.
Changing Permissions and Ownership
You may need to change a file’s permission settings to protect it from others. Use the chmod command to change the permission settings of a file or a directory. To use chmod effectively, you have to specify the permission settings. A good way is to concatenate letters from the columns of the following table in the order shown (Who/Action/Permission). You use only the single character from each column — the text in parentheses is for explanation only.
Letter Codes for File Permissions
|u (user)||+ (add)||r (read)|
|g (group)||- (remove)||w (write)|
|o (others)||= (assign)||x (execute)|
|a (all)||s (set user ID)|
For example, to give everyone read access to all files in a directory, pick a (for all) from the first column, + (for add) from the second column, and r (for read) from the third column to come up with the permission setting a+r. Then use the set of options with chmod, like this:
chmod a+r *.
On the other hand, to permit everyone to execute one specific file, enter:
chmod a+x filename
Then type ls -l to verify that the change took place.
Another way to specify a permission setting with chmod is to use a three-digit sequence of numbers. In a detailed listing, the read, write, and execute permission settings for the user, group, and others appear as the sequence …
… and dashes will appear in place of letters for disallowed operations. Given that, you should think of “rwxrwxrwx” as three occurrences of the string “rwx.” Now assign the values r=4, w=2, and x=1.
To get the value of the sequence rwx, simply add the values of r, w, and x (4+2+1=7). With this formula, you can assign a three-digit value to any permission setting. For example, if the user can read and write the file but everyone else can only read the file, then the permission setting is rw-r–r– (that’s how it appears in the listing), and the value is 644. Thus, if you want all files in a directory to be readable by everyone but writable only by the user, use the following command:
chmod 644 *
The following table shows some common permissions and values.
Common File Permissions
Sometimes you have to change a file’s user or group ownership for everything to work correctly. For example, suppose you’re instructed to create a directory named “cups” and give it the ownership of user ID lp and group ID sys. You can log in as root and create the “cups” directory with the command mkdir:
If you check the file’s details with the ls -l command, you see that the user and group ownership is root root. To change the owner, use the chown command. For example, to change the ownership of the “cups” directory to user ID lp and group ID sys, type
chown lp.sys cups
Working with Files
To copy files from one directory to another, use the cp command. If you want to copy a file to the current directory, but retain the original name, use a period (.) as the second argument of the cp command. Thus, the following command copies the Xresources file from the /etc/X11 directory to the current directory (denoted by a single period):
cp /etc/X11/Xresources .
The cp command makes a new copy of a file and leaves the original intact.
If you want to copy the entire contents of a directory — including all subdirectories and their contents — to another directory, use the command cp -ar sourcedir destdir. This command copies everything in the sourcedir directory to destdir. For example, to copy all files from the “/etc/X11″ directory to the current directory, type the following command:
cp -ar /etc/X11 .
To move a file to a new location, use the mv command. The original copy is gone, and a new copy appears at the destination. You can use mv to rename a file. If you want to change the name of today.list to old.list, use the mv command, as follows:
mv today.list old.list
On the other hand, if you want to move the today.list file to a subdirectory named “saved,” use this command:
mv today.list saved
An interesting feature of mv is that you can use it to move entire directories (with all their subdirectories and files) to a new location. If you have a directory named data that contains many files and subdirectories, then you can move that entire directory structure to “old_data” by using the following command:
mv data old_data
To delete files, use the rm command. For example, to delete a file named old.list, type the following command:
Be careful with the rm command — especially when you log in as root. You can inadvertently delete important files with rm.
Working with Directories
To organize files in your home directory, you have to create new directories. Use the mkdir command to create a directory. For example, to create a directory named “images” in the current directory, type the following:
After you create the directory, you can use the cd images command to change to that directory.
You can create an entire directory tree by using the “-p” option with the mkdir command. For example, suppose your system has a “/usr/src” directory and you want to create the directory tree “/usr/src/book/java/examples/applets.” To create this directory hierarchy, type the following command:
mkdir -p /usr/src/book/java/examples/applets
When you no longer need a directory, use the rmdir command to delete it. You can delete a directory only when the directory is empty. To remove an empty directory tree, you can use the “-p” option, like this:
rmdir -p /usr/src/book/java/examples/applets
This command removes the empty parent directories of applets. The command stops when it encounters a directory that’s not empty.
Just as you can use the ipconfig command to see the status of IP configuration with Windows, the ifconfig command can be used in Linux. You can get information about the usage of the ifconfig command by using “ifconfig -help.” The following output provides an example of the basic ifconfig command run on a Linux system:
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:60:08:17:63:A0
inet addr:192.168.1.101 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:911 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:804 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
Interrupt:5 Base address:0xe400
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:3924 Metric:1
RX packets:18 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:18 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
In addition to ifconfig, Linux users can use the iwconfig command to view the state of a wireless network. Using iwconfig, you can view such important information as the link quality, AP MAC address, data rate, and encryption keys, which can be helpful in ensuring that the parameters in the network are consistent.
Having concluded looking at the basic Linux commands CompTIA wants you to be familiar with for the upcoming A+ certification exams, we will next turn our focus to Windows 8/8.1. | <urn:uuid:4b0d13aa-4378-49ac-8f78-7337ba1d0ccb> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://certmag.com/basic-linux-commands-need-know-comptias-new-2/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170600.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00547-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.848272 | 1,917 | 3.53125 | 4 |
Heartbleed may have been a software bug, but it highlighted glaring weaknesses in existing hardware architectures, which remain vulnerable to memory-bound attacks, a university researcher said this week.
Data is vulnerable to hackers when in transit or in computer memory, said Ruby Lee, professor of engineering at Princeton University's Department of Electrical Engineering, at a presentation to the Hot Chips conference.
The weakness is in the memory and cache, or secondary memory where data temporarily resides before being sent for processing or storage.
"This is correctly functioning hardware -- with no bugs -- but it is leaking out information," said Lee, who was chief architect and one of the lead processor developers at Hewlett-Packard before joining Princeton.
Securing memory was a hot discussion topic among chip experts at the forum, and Heartbleed sparked discussions on how hackers could access data from memory, storage and interconnects. Chip makers talked about hardware being the first line of defense against such attacks, and proposed techniques to scramble data and secure keys within a chip. A research project at Princeton funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security recommended a new architecture that could secure memory and cache.
Heartbleed exposed a critical defect in affected versions of the OpenSSL software library, which enables secure communication over the Internet and networks. Heartbleed affected servers, networking gear and appliances, and hardware makers have since issued patches to protect systems.
Heartbleed was a "side-channel" attack that determined the availability of systems, and hackers could take advantage of defects in OpenSSL to read cache. It would be possible for attackers to steal important data such as passwords, private keys and other identify information from memory and cache, Lee said.
"Lots of people have talked about the attacks, but very few people have talked about the solutions," Lee said. "The hardware is still leaking out your secret keys all the time. Every single piece of hardware that has a cache is vulnerable to cache-side channel leakage."
The weak link is the fixed memory addresses of cache. Attackers can effectively re-create the use of cache by a victim and map bits of keys to specific parts of memory used. Attackers can then extract data from the tracked memory addresses to reconstruct keys.
"Because there's a fixed memory address ... the attacker can look backwards and figure out which memory addresses the victim used," Lee said. "Then he can devise the whole key."
Attackers will be able to "read out the crown jewel of primary keys -- the symmetric keys used for encryption and the private keys that are used for identity in the digital world that you should protect," Lee said.
It's difficult to launch software attacks on hardware, but side-channel attacks can be dangerous, Lee said. An exposed system could be left vulnerable by other bugs like Heartbleed.
"If the attacker can attack fixed systems, it's easier. Once he finds a path, he can attack 80 percent of the system and ... when he comes back, he can find the same path in," Lee said.
To mitigate such attacks, Lee and researchers at Princeton have reconstructed cache architecture so tracks left by the victim are effectively wiped out, making it difficult to carry out side-channel attacks. The cache architecture, called Newcache, could replace the exposed cache and memory in systems today.
"[DHS] would very much like the industry to adopt some of these techniques," Lee said.
Newcache is structured like regular cache, but has dynamic and randomized cache mapping that will make it harder for attackers to correlate memory usage to key bits. That will make it hard for hackers to map the cache and extract data.
"You want to be a moving target so that the attacker ... can't get in the next hour or in an identically configured system," Lee said.
Newcache is ready to implement, and the additional security measures won't hurt performance, Lee said. Memory typically slows down when new features -- like ECC for error correction -- are added. But benchmarks of Newcache actually showed improvements in system performance, Lee said.
"The secure caches are much bigger, they aren't any more power hungry, and with clever circuit design, aren't any slower than your conventional caches," Lee said.
It could take years for chip and system makers to change memory features, but Lee said chip makers need to start thinking about securing data within systems, Lee said.
Memory security should be a priority, Newcache or not, Lee said.
"Most of the security is done in a reactive mode. When an attack happens, people scramble to find a defense and close up a hole," Lee said. "You've got to think ahead." | <urn:uuid:034fffb2-50db-41d0-8938-d219c13f2e26> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.computerworld.com/article/2491263/malware-vulnerabilities/heartbleed-software-flaw-exposes-weaknesses-in-hardware-design.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170600.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00547-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950009 | 955 | 2.96875 | 3 |
When you think about it, it's ridiculous: almost all of those billions of e-mails that find their way around the globe every day are sent in the clear with no encryption of any kind applied to the message. There are two ways to encrypt e-mail: with S/MIME, built into Apple's Mail application—but this requires getting (read: buying) a certificate—and GPG.
GPG is a command line utility and GPGMail is a plugin that lets Mail.app use GPG to create and check digital signatures and to encrypt and decrypt messages. Unfortunately, as the GPGMail team has put it, "GPGMail is a complete hack, relying on Mail's private internal API. Use it at your own risks!" One of these risks is that Apple brings out OS X 10.4 or 10.5 and it takes many months or even more than a year for an update to come out that supports the new OS. (But complaining is easy; GPGMail is open source, so don't complain too much. Help with coding instead.) Anyway, fairly recently, GPGMail 1.2.0 was released. Leopard users can finally read and write encrypted mail again. Yippee!
For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about but are still reading:
These days, simply encrypting something is pretty easy. There are several strong algorithms around and computers are plenty fast to run them. The problem is: how do you make sure the intended recipient and nobody else is able to decode the message? This is where public key cryptography comes in. There are several algorithms that have two different keys: a public one for encryption or checking signatures, and a private one for decryption and creating signatures. Simply generate a pair of keys, keep the private one and publish the public one, and you're in business.
Well, not entirely. The problem that remains is how to be sure that a public key belongs to a certain person. For HTTPS/SSL, this issue is handled by "trusted third parties" (I'm sorry, I can't say those words with a straight face) such as Verisign or DigiCert, who provide a certain level of assurance that a public key (in the form of a certificate) belongs to the party the certificate says it belongs to. However, that's not free—not as in beer (certificates cost money) and also not as in speech, because only organizations that can bribe Apple, Microsoft, the Mozilla Foundation, et cetera get to be "trusted" third parties.
This is where GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) comes in. GPG is an open source tool that encrypts, decrypts, signs, and checks signatures. It also manages a "key chain" of public keys and a web of trust. The idea is that, rather than having a list of trusted third parties and trusting them when they say that someone is who they say they are, everyone manages their own trust relationships and exports these for use by others. So, if I trust Jacqui and Jacqui trusts Clint, just attaching her signature to his public key wouldn't ensure me that this public key is indeed Clint's. But if David and Eric also sign Clint's key, that's good enough for me and I'll trust Clint's key, too. (Note that "trust" just means "knows that this is indeed that person's key." It's perfectly reasonable to sign a stranger's key after checking his or her ID.)
GPG is a command line tool, but after installing it and generating a public/private key pair and uploading it to a key server, it's generally not necessary to use the command line—GPGMail adds a bunch of menu items to Mail that make it possible to use GPG from within Mail. | <urn:uuid:cae60612-c175-45c8-986a-0134d1f3fcff> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/01/gpgmail-finally-works-under-mac-os-105/?comments=1 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171416.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00423-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962347 | 787 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Session Hijacking: Exploiting TCP, UDP and HTTP Sessions
Contributed by Shray Kapoor
Session hijacking can be done at two levels: Network Level and Application Level. Network layer hijacking involves TCP and UDP sessions, whereas Application level session hijack occurs with HTTP sessions. Successful attack on network level sessions will provide the attacker some critical information which will than be used to attack application level sessions, so most of the time they occur together depending on the system that is attacked. Network level attacks are most attractive to an attacker because they do not have to be customized on web application basis; they simply attack the data flow of the protocol, which is common for all web applications.
This document is in PDF format. To view it click here. | <urn:uuid:5d80ff7a-83f9-458b-8175-8fdb4ed0f5d7> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://infosecwriters.com/articles/2015/05/14/session-hijacking-exploiting-tcp-udp-and-http-sessions | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170613.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00243-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.872016 | 155 | 2.515625 | 3 |
The dangers of public Wi-Fi are already well known, but the security issues of in-flight Internet connection are still somewhat obscure. Typically there's no password protection on the Wi-Fi connection, so persons with malicious intent can intercept data that’s being transmitted on the wireless network quite easily.
Airplanes are unique hacking grounds more dangerous than airports or coffee shops, as they cram passengers in one small space for hours. This gives plenty of time and opportunity for hackers to access all data that’s being transmitted over open networks. Passengers who do online banking, shopping or business emailing are especially vulnerable to identity and data theft.
Devices such as WiFi Pineapple are accessible to anyone and are particularly dangerous on flights. The Pineapple, which is small enough to be stored in someone’s carry on, could be used as a pretend Wi-Fi connection so when a user connects to Wi-Fi, they are actually connecting to a device capable of hacking your private data. NordVPN provides 10 tips to better secure your data. | <urn:uuid:7e82ceb8-2eae-4608-a3e1-bacb4e5221b5> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.csoonline.com/article/3152059/mobile-security/how-to-make-sure-your-data-doesn-t-crash-and-burn.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170613.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00243-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942823 | 214 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Tutorial: Maps, pins, and bubbles
This tutorial shows you how to create an app that lets users drop pins and bubbles on a map to mark locations.
You will learn to:
- Use a MapView and handle the signals that are emitted when the user interacts with the map
- Change the map using sensors and MapView functions
- Customize your MapView with pins and bubbles
Before you begin
You should have the following things ready:
- The BlackBerry 10 Native SDK
- A device or simulator running BlackBerry 10
If this is your first app, you can download the tools that you need and learn how to create, build, and run your first Cascades project.
Downloading the full source code
This tutorial uses a step-by-step approach to build a maps app. If you want to look at the complete source code for the MapView sample app, you can download the complete project and import it into the Momentics IDE for BlackBerry. To learn how, see Importing and exporting projects.
Set up your project
Before we start creating our application, create an empty Cascades project in the Momentics IDE using the standard empty project template. To make it easier to follow along, this tutorial assumes that you name your project mapview.
We need to add the following line to our mapview.pro file to allow our app to access location services:
LIBS += -lbb -lQtLocationSubset -lbbcascadesmaps -lGLESv1_CM
To use some of the classes in these libraries, your project must use an API level of 10.2 or later. For more information, see API levels.
We also need to add the Location permission to our bar-descriptor.xml file so that we can get the current location of the device:
There are several graphical assets that our app uses, such as background images and custom bubbles and pins. We need to import the following images:
bubble.png - A text bubble for a location on the map
clearpin.png - An icon for the action to clear all pins on the map
pin.png - An icon for the action to drop a pin on the map
url.png - An icon for the action to center the URL of a pin on the map
compass.png - An image for the compass on the main UI
me.png - A different icon for the location of your device
on_map_pin.png - A pin on the map
To import the images into your project:
- Download the assets.zip file.
- Extract the images folder into the assets folder of your project.
- Refresh your project in the Project Explorer view.
Last modified: 2015-03-31 | <urn:uuid:fa003a9a-e870-4bfe-8ffe-f5f308746d53> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://developer.blackberry.com/native/documentation/device_platform/location/tutorial_mapview.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170875.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00419-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.789257 | 575 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Wednesday said they've achieved a first: A nuclear fusion system has produced more energy than it initially absorbed.
While that may seem a small victory, it is the first time scientists have been able to replicate, to a small degree, the same process that the Sun and stars use to create their massive amounts of energy.
The interior of the NIF laser target chamber. The service module carrying technicians can be seen on the left. The target positioner, which holds the target, is on the right.
The research, published in the peer reviewed journal Nature, involved a petawatt power laser used to try to ignite fusion plasma fuel in a confined space. Each pulse of the laser, which delivered peak power of 1,000,000,000,000,000 watts, lasted less than 30 femtoseconds, or 0.00000000000003 seconds.
The laser squeezes hydrogen atoms together producing helium atoms, and in the process a massive amount of energy is released.
A fusion reaction is markedly different from fission reactions that are used in today's nuclear reactors. Instead of splitting atoms as fission does, fusion bonds atoms.
With fusion, only a tiny amount of fuel is present at any given time (typically about a milligram), according to Mike Dunne, director for Laser Fusion Energy at Lawrence Livermore Labs.
The laser, known as the National Ignition Facility (NIF), uses 192 beams 300 yards long that focus on a fuel cell about the diameter of a No. 2 pencil.
A metallic case called a hohlraum holds the fuel capsule for NIF experiments. Target handling systems precisely position the target and freeze it to cryogenic temperatures (18 kelvins, or -427 degrees Fahrenheit) so that a fusion reaction is more easily achieved.
While powerful, the laser has not yet been able to ignite the plasma fuel. When and if it does, the fuel would begin to burn in a self-sustaining reaction to such a degree that it will produce a megajoule of energy.
Producing that staggering amount of energy could help to solve the world's energy issues.
"Think of it like the gas in the piston chamber of your car, where the idea is to ignite all the fuel to produce an efficient burn. So it is 'self-sustaining' but can never be 'run-away.' In the case of laser fusion, the burn time is incredibly short - typically a few tens of picoseconds," Dunne said in an email to Computerworld.
The researchers' latest victory marks the accomplishment of a key goal on the way to plasma fuel ignition: the project generated energy through a fusion reaction that exceeded the amount of energy deposited into deuterium-tritium fusion fuel and hotspot during the implosion process, "resulting in a fuel gain greater than unity," the team stated in the Nature article.
"Ignition is the ultimate goal of the experiments, so the latest result marks a waypoint on the way to that point (albeit quite a significant waypoint)," Dunne said.
The hohlraum cylinder, which contains the NIF fusion fuel capsule, is just a few millimeters wide, about the size of a pencil eraser, with beam entrance holes at either end. The fuel capsule is the size of a small pea.
The next significant step for the research is to achieve an "alpha burn," where the fusion output more than doubles the energy input to the fuel. In an alpha burn, the researchers hope to pass a particular threshold of energy output -- specifically 10,000,000,000,000,000 fusion reactions.
"We are currently a few percent below this value," Dunne said.
Once ignition is achieved, it promises a path toward a sustainable, environmentally sound energy source that would exceed that of any previously created.
"There are a number of possible paths forward," Dunne said, "and it will require a close partnership between industry and government. But in principle, because the NIF was built at the same scale as the fusion performance needed for a power plant, the leap is not as great as you may think."
Dunne believes there once nuclear fusion energy is achieved, there will be an overriding push to capitalize on the success of it.
"It is, after all, often called the 'holy grail' of energy sources," he said.
Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian, or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed . His email address is email@example.com.
Read more about emerging technologies in Computerworld's Emerging Technologies Topic Center.
This story, "Scientists achieve nuclear fusion with giant laser" was originally published by Computerworld. | <urn:uuid:146a9341-31b2-408c-a9dd-150fd2b84a94> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.networkworld.com/article/2174339/data-center/scientists-achieve-nuclear-fusion-with-giant-laser.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171463.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00119-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933072 | 1,007 | 3.90625 | 4 |
An American website has published a warning of the possible appearance of a virus from outer space. No, it’s not a joke. The claim was made by Richard Carrigan, a physicist with the Fermi National Acceleration Laboratory in Batavia (Illinois).
From an early age, my parents taught me to be as open as possible to others’ ideas, however bizarre or unlikely these may seem. Nobody should be dismissed out of hand just because they think in a certain way – an attitude that I assume all my readers share. However, when I saw the item about extraterrestrial viruses, my hackles rose, particularly as it came from a scientist, or at least somebody who claimed to be one.
What surprised me was not the fact that it talked about Martians, I regard belief in the existence of life in outer space as a personal issue which I am prepared to respect. What really struck me was the almost non-existent scientific and logical basis for the claim. Instead, it is little more than an incoherent fantasy, the result of a conversation between friends at the end of an evening during which a few too many bottles of cheap wine had been consumed.
I accept that you can make up anything you want for the movies: not for nothing do we call it “science fiction” (or “invented science”). A close viewing of “Star Wars”, for example, will quickly reveal scientific errors which would leave any high school student flunking his exams, but the point of such movies is not to give the audience a physics lesson but to entertain them. This is why people pay their money, and may the force be with them. Or the movie “Independence Day”, where the earthlings halt an invasion by introducing a virus into the computers of the invading spaceships. Fine, it helped to pass an enjoyable few hours, but that was all.
Before making a statement like the one mentioned at the start of this article, one should think carefully, and doubly so if you work in a scientific institution. This is because the statement is likely to be read by lots of people who won’t have the faintest idea about the reality which underlies the statement, but who will nevertheless believe the statement if it comes from a scientist.
Let’s start at the beginning. What operating systems do we earthlings use, and what systems do Martians use? Suppose I had a lot of disks containing material recorded using operating systems which are completely obsolete (CP/M or Xenix) and I wanted to keep this information. The process of migrating this information onto current media would not be an easy job. And that’s without mentioning the technological challenge of retrieving the information which is stored on punch cards. Apart from the system with which these were created, who nowadays has a card reader of this sort in working condition?
Now, at the start of the 21st century, a fairly simple system for communicating between computer systems has been created, allowing information from different machines to be shared without too much difficulty: it is called TCP/IP. If you use an IBM AIX system with a RISC processor you can access the same content as an Apple user with OS/X and a Motorola processor, a Hewlett Packard Windows users with an Intel processor or other setups using an AMD Athlon processor and Linux. This allows you to send information and share data without any difficulty. However, it’s another matter if what we want to share is a virus: that is, executable code. Here, the problem is greater.
Executable code is intimately linked to the operating system on which it runs. As many readers will already know, it is impossible to execute a piece of Linux binary code on a Windows system, and it is every bit as difficult to launch an Apple executable file in AIX, or at least to do so natively, without using emulators. There have been attempts, of course: for example, Windows NT 4 was able to execute not just DOS but OS/2 programs. But only in character mode and with a 16-bit structure. So any Martian creating a computer virus for use on planet earth would face some very daunting obstacles.
But the problem doesn’t end there. How do Earth computers work? The most advanced users talk about binary logic, and data buses with a given number of bits and specific activation times for a signal to be recognized by a given device. How could an extra-terrestrial find out about this? It takes humans several years to understand it – basically, the length of a degree course in computer studies – and that’s assuming a knowledge of the language and writing system in which the information itself is communicated.
I also have one last doubt, which is surely the clincher. How do they know we’re here? If they use the same methods as we do (visual observation at the beginning, and radar now), they would need to have detected us in some way. We can rule out visual observation, as even astronauts in orbit are unable see human life from a few kilometres up, let alone from many light years away.
So the only hope is that they have detected us using the electromagnetic waves we send out. And the first signal of any intensity was sent on December 12, 1901 when Marconi received an “S” in Morse Code, sent from one side of the Atlantic to the other. This was just over 100 years ago, so even with a smooth journey the signal would only have travelled 100 light years, rather less than the distance of 900 years it is assumed that it would take to reach the nearest planetary system to Earth, the PSR 1257+12 pulsar.
Anyway, let’s assume that these aliens – Klingons, for example – have managed to intercept this signal and have learnt about the behaviour of Earth computers solely on the basis of Morse Code transmissions. Being Klingons, and because they are really bored, they focus all their efforts on introducing a virus into Earth’s computers. I’m sure they would have nothing better to do when encountering a life system and civilization very different from their own!
Fine. No doubt lots of hackers are pointing their satellite dishes towards Alpha Centauri, the nearest star, so that their viruses infect the IT systems of the extra-terrestrials. How best to compile the virus code? With Microsoft C++? Or maybe using a GNU compiler? And what system will the aliens use? | <urn:uuid:1c9e50a7-b1d2-48d1-94f3-aacbd4badcb9> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2003/12/17/the-virus-that-came-from-outer-space/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501172018.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104612-00471-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962307 | 1,336 | 2.78125 | 3 |
All of these items are critical factors contributing to the TCP protocol’s overall success. The problems begin, however, when congestion controls from the outer TCP protocol interfere with those of the inner one and vice versa. TCP divides a data stream into segments which are sent as individual Internet Protocol (IP) datagrams. Each segment carries a sequence number that numbers bytes within the data stream along with an acknowledgement number indicating to the other side what sequence number was last received. TCP uses adaptive timeouts to decide when a re-send should occur. This design can backfire when stacking TCP connections though, because a slower outer connection can cause the upper layer to queue up more retransmissions than the lower layer is able to process. This type of network slowdown is known as a “TCP meltdown problem.”
Surprisingly, this is not a design flaw, as the idea of running TCP within itself had not even occurred to the protocol designers at the time, which is why this dilemma was not originally addressed. Fortunately, some computer scientists have been able to demonstrate situations where a stacked TCP arrangement actually improves performance. In any case, Virtual Private Networking products like OpenVPN have been designed to accommodate for the problems that may occur with tunneling TCP within TCP. Unlike SSTP, OpenVPN is able to run over UDP to handle such times when a stacked TCP connection would actually degrade performance. Although SSTP may be suitable in some situations, it is severely limited by only being compatible with the latest versions of the Windows operating system. Microsoft has not announced any plans to port it to previous Windows OS versions or any other OS for that matter. | <urn:uuid:53f009e3-961c-48f4-b067-0831d6a40957> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://vpnhaus.ncp-e.com/2011/06/30/sstp-the-problem-with-tcp-over-tcp-part-2/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501173761.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104613-00647-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952545 | 333 | 3.4375 | 3 |
The asteroid NASA say is about the half the size of a football field that will blow past Earth on Feb 15 could be worth up to $195 billion in metals and propellant.
That's what the scientists at Deep Space Industries, a company that wants to mine these flashing hunks of space materials, thinks the asteroid known as 2012 DA14 is worth - if they could catch it.
[RELATED: The sizzling world of asteroids]
The lack of a rocket and spacecraft that could actually catch such as asteroid of course is a big problem. There are a few other major issues as well. The path of asteroid 2012 DA14 is tilted relative to Earth, requiring too much energy to chase it down for mining. Deep Space believes there are thousands of near Earth asteroids that will be easier to chase down than this one.
Still, according to DSI experts, if 2012 DA14 contains 5% recoverable water, that alone -- in space as rocket fuel -- might be worth as much as $65 billion. If 10% of its mass It could mass which could range from as little as 16,000 tons or as much as one million tons -- is easily recovered iron, nickel and other metals, that could be worth -- in space as building material -- an additional $130 billion.
Once reusable launch vehicles are more readily available, future prices to fall to 20% of today's levels, an asteroid the size of 2012 DA14 would still be worth $39 billion, and the cost of launching hardware to retrieve and process it would be much lower, DSI stated.
DSI has said it wants to begin asteroid mining in 2015. That's when the company said it plans to send out a squadron of 55lb cubesats called Fireflies, riding along with already scheduled launches, that will explore near-Earth space for two to six months looking for target asteroids.
In 2016, Deep Space said it will begin launching 70-lb DragonFlies for round-trip visits that bring back samples. The DragonFly expeditions will take two to four years, depending on the target, and will return 60 to 150 lbs of asteroid materiel.
Collecting asteroid metals is only part of the company's plans however. DSI said it has a has a patent-pending technology called the MicroGravity Foundry that can transform raw asteroid material into complex metal parts. The MicroGravity Foundry is a 3D printer that uses lasers to draw patterns in a nickel-charged gas medium, causing the nickel to be deposited in precise patterns.
A much larger spacecraft known as a Harvestor-class machine could "return thousands of tons per year, producing water, propellant, metals, building materials and shielding for everything we do in space in decades to come. Initial markets will be customers in space, where any substance is very expensive due to the cost of launching from Earth, over time, as costs drop and technologies improve we can then begin "exporting" back to Earth," the company stated.
The company envisions creating outposts that could offer satellite or spacecraft refueling for example. Sending fuel, water, and building materials into high Earth orbit costs at least $10 million per ton, even using new lower-cost launch vehicles just now coming into service, DSI stated.
Planetary says asteroid resources have some unique characteristics that make them especially attractive. Unlike Earth, where heavier metals are close to the core, metals in asteroids are distributed throughout their body, making them easier to extract. Asteroids contain valuable and useful materials like iron, nickel, water and rare platinum group metals, often in significantly higher concentration than found in mines on Earth.
Meanwhile NASA insists NASA added that while 2012 DA14 has no chance of striking Earth, since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s, astronomers have never seen an object so big come so close to our planet. NASA added 2012 DA14is a fairly typical near-Earth asteroid. It measures some 50 meters wide, neither very large nor very small, and is probably made of stone, as opposed to metal or ice. The space agency estimates that an asteroid like 2012 DA14 flies past Earth, on average, every 40 years, yet actually strikes our planet only every 1200 years or so.
The impact of a 50-meter asteroid is not cataclysmic--unless you happen to be underneath it, NASA said.
Check out these other hot stories: | <urn:uuid:623b0863-bb1a-4879-bffa-1f03e199546d> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.networkworld.com/article/2224029/security/earth-buzzing-asteroid-could-be-worth-big-bucks---195b-if-we-could-catch-it.html?source=nww_rss | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171608.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00467-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957827 | 894 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Jeff Kalwerisky, VP of Information Security & Technical Training at CPE Interactive, Inc
The buzz phrase du jour, the ‘Internet of Things’, – AKA the “Internet of Everything” – refers to a myriad of everyday devices which are being connected to the Internet, each with its own IP address. The IoT will comprise large numbers of such low-cost “smart” devices, up to 26 billion by 2020, according Gartner. They range from “smart” watches (Hi Apple!) to microwaves, and heart monitors to “smart” power grids.
Predictably, the hype about the future benefits is in full force. And, yes, some of these benefits may actually happen. However, based on past disruptive trends, we can be certain that: (1) hackers, crackers, and attackers will not be slow to spot new opportunities for badware; (2) the IoT will generate gigantic amounts of data at very high velocity, with associated privacy concerns, and (3) boring stuff like updates and patches are going to be tough to do.
The question, “What Can Possibly Go Wrong?”, must temper out enthusiasm for this immersive new environment so that we can avoid some of the security disasters of the past, particularly in sensitive industries, like healthcare and nationwide utility grids. This session will review the IoT from the viewpoint of cybersecurity and data privacy and develop some guidelines for the pragmatic and cautious user. | <urn:uuid:0418ee06-3fe3-48cb-8a4b-a73b685701a1> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/10015/149543 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171608.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00467-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931624 | 305 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Skype said Tuesday it is investigating a new tool that collects a person's last known IP address, a potential privacy-compromising issue.
Instructions posted on Pastebin on Thursday showed how a person's IP address could be shown without adding the targeted user as a contact by looking at the person's general information and log files.
Skype, which is owned by Microsoft, said in an e-mail statement that "this is an ongoing, industry-wide issue faced by all peer-to-peer software companies. We are committed to the safety and security of our customers and we are taking measures to help protect them."
In October, Skype acknowledged a research paper that showed how a Skype user's IP address can be determined without that user knowing. It also demonstrated that more than half the time the IP address could be accurately linked to sharing content using the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol.
An IP address is an important piece of information that can be used to track the approximate location of a user and their service provider. But the information is not necessarily accurate, as a person could be using a VPN, whose data center may be located in a different country than the actual user.
Another way to broadcast inaccurate IP addresses is browsing the internet using The Onion Router (TOR), an anonymizing service that routes a person's internet traffic through a network of worldwide servers in a fashion that is difficult to trace. An IP address also just identifies a computer and not the person sitting behind a keyboard.
Skype uses a peer-to-peer system to route its data traffic, which is also encrypted. But its encryption system is proprietary and not been open for scrutiny, which has prompted caution from security experts.
Send news tips and comments to firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:48b0d76a-3d62-446d-ab82-23fd62b0dd18> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.cio.com/article/2396572/security0/skype-investigates-tool-that-reveals-users--ip-addresses.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171781.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00643-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957271 | 362 | 2.515625 | 3 |
A Visual Way to See What is Changing Within Wikipedia
July 9, 2012
Wikipedia is a go to source for quick answers outside the classroom, but many don’t realize Wiki is an ever evolving information source. Geekosystem’s article “Wikistats Show You What Parts Of Wikipedia Are Changing” provides a visual way to see what is changing within Wikipedia.
The performance program was explained as:
“Utilizing technology from Datasift, a social data platform with a specialization in real-time streams, Wikistats lists some clear, concise information you can use to see how Wikipedia is flowing and changing out from under you. Using Natural Language Processing, Wikistats is able to suss realtime trends and updates. In short, Wikistats will show you what pages are being updated the most right now, how many edits they get by how many unique users, and how many lines are being added vs. how many are being deleted.”
Enlightenment was gained when actually viewing the chart below:
This program calculates well defined reports on Wikipedia’s traffic, and Wiki frequenters might find the above chart surprising. The report in this case shows the reality that Wikipedia is an over flowing pool of information.
We are not saying Wikipedia is unreliable, but one should never solely rely on one information source. The chart simply provides a visual way to see what is changing within Wikipedia and help users understand how data flows. This programs potential for real time use on other sites could be tremendous.
Jennifer Shockley, July 9, 2012 | <urn:uuid:2e1c60a7-f502-4f1b-bd25-ad793738d531> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2012/07/09/a-visual-way-to-see-what-is-changing-within-wikipedia/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501172077.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104612-00167-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916198 | 323 | 2.875 | 3 |
PKI & ID
PKI is short for Public key Infrastructure and is basically a scheme for establishing and using trust for mass communication. PKI consists of a variety of components from a certification authority over policies to users credentials.
PKI is based on solid standards, predominantly x.509, PKIX and others, which ensure that interfacing back-end systems cause little or no hassle.
PKI is actually simple
Many PKI vendors make PKI sound complicated and quite a few potential customers believe that to be the case. PKI is in fact rather simple, especially if there is a clearly defined business case. The business case should fit with a need for secure mass communication benefitting from cost efficiency and user transparency.
The are a variety of business areas where PKI is highly applicable, which include:
- Identification, e.g. ePassport
- Content protection, e.g. DRM (Digital Rights Management)
- Payment, e.g. EMV payment cards
- Trusted devices, e.g. mobiles or chips, e.g. Trust Platform Modules
Cryptomathic's PKI product range includes all the applications needed to set up and maintain a 'trusted community' based on PKI. Our PKI products can be used as stand alone or in conjunction with other PKI products (from Cryptomathic or third parties) and include key functionality, such as:
- Certification Authority (CA), including registration and validation authorities
- Time stamping
- Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP)
- Key generation (when self signed certificates are not practical)
Cryptomathic PKI customers range from small to medium enterprises issuing certificates in the thousands to large technology organisations issuing billions of certificates every year.
Professional Management of CA Tasks
Real-Time Certificate Status Information
High Performance Crypto Tools
Secure LDS Generation | <urn:uuid:35660ba0-bc1a-4492-b593-7127ad421c02> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.cryptomathic.com/products/pki-id | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501172077.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104612-00167-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.89454 | 386 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Security researchers have released new tools that can bypass the encryption used to protect many types of wireless routers. Ironically, the tools take advantage of design flaws in a technology pushed by the wireless industry that was intended to make the security features of modern routers easier to use.
At issue is a technology called “Wi-Fi Protected Setup” (WPS) that ships with many routers marketed to consumers and small businesses. According to the Wi-Fi Alliance, an industry group, WPS is “designed to ease the task of setting up and configuring security on wireless local area networks. WPS enables typical users who possess little understanding of traditional Wi-Fi configuration and security settings to automatically configure new wireless networks, add new devices and enable security.”
Setting up a home wireless network to use encryption traditionally involved navigating a confusing array of Web-based menus, selecting from a jumble of geeky-sounding and ill-explained encryption options (WEP, WPA, WPA2, TKIP, AES), and then repeating many of those procedures on the various wireless devices the user wants to connect to the network. To make matters worse, many wireless routers come with little or no instructions on how to set up encryption.
Enter WPS. Wireless routers with WPS built-in ship with a personal identification number (PIN – usually 8 digits) printed on them. Using WPS, the user can enable strong encryption for the wireless network simply by pushing a button on the router and then entering the PIN in a network setup wizard designed to interact with the router.
But according to new research, routers with WPS are vulnerable to a very basic hacking technique: The brute-force attack. Put simply, an attacker can try thousands of combinations in rapid succession until he happens on the correct 8-digit PIN that allows authentication to the device.
One way to protect against such automated attacks is to disallow authentication for a specified amount of time after a certain number of unsuccessful attempts. Stefan Viehböck, a freelance information security researcher, said some wireless access point makers implemented such an approach. The problem, he said, is that most of the vendors did so in ways that make brute-force attacks slower, but still feasible.
Earlier today, Viehböck released on his site a free tool that he said can be used to duplicate his research and findings, detailed in this paper (PDF). He said his tool took about four hours to test all possible combinations on TP-Link and D-Link routers he examined, and less than 24 hours against a Netgear router.
“The Wi-Fi alliance members were clearly opting for usability” over security, Viehböck said in a instant message conversation with KrebsOnSecurity.com. “It is very unlikely that nobody noticed that the way they designed the protocol makes a brute force attack easier than it ever should.”
Separately, Craig Heffner, a researcher with Columbia, Md. based security consultancy Tactical Network Solutions, has released an open-source tool called “Reaver” to attack the same vulnerability. Heffner notes that once an attacker has successfully guessed the WPS PIN, he can instantly recover the router’s encryption passphrase, even if the owner changes the passphrase. In addition, he warns, “access points with multiple radios (2.4/5GHz) can be configured with multiple WPA keys. Since the radios use the same WPS pin, knowledge of the pin allows an attacker to recover all WPA keys.”
The important thing to keep in mind with this flaw is that devices with WPS built-in are vulnerable whether or not users take advantage of the WPS capability in setting up their router. Also, routers that include WPS functionality are likely to have this feature turned on by default.
First the good news: Blocking this attack may be as simple as disabling the WPS feature on your router. The bad news is that it may not be possible in all cases to do this.
In an advisory released on Dec. 27, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) warned that “an attacker within range of the wireless access point may be able to brute force the WPS PIN and retrieve the password for the wireless network, change the configuration of the access point, or cause a denial of service.” The advisory notes that products made by a number of vendors are impacted, including Belkin, Buffalo, D-Link, Linksys, Netgear, TP-Link and ZyXel.
Viehböck said none of the router makers appear to have issued firmware updates to address the vulnerability. The US-CERT advisory makes no mention of updates from hardware vendors. The advisory also says little about which models may be affected, but if your router has a “WPS PIN” notation on its backside, then it shipped with this WPS feature built-in. | <urn:uuid:c3772bd1-0ab2-47a6-b902-4bd898e3c941> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/12/new-tools-bypass-wireless-router-security/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170925.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00463-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939534 | 1,028 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Iowa is often called the “land between two rivers.” With the Mississippi River forming its eastern boundary and the Missouri River its western, the state is no stranger to floods. But the spring of 2008 was different. As months of snowmelt saturated the Upper Mississippi River Basin, a seemingly endless string of spring storms pounded the state. In the two-week period between May 29 and June 12, many parts of Iowa received more than 9 inches of rain (the average is 2.45 inches).
On June 8, 2008, the Cedar River crested and the city of Cedar Rapids became inundated with floodwaters. About 10 square miles of the city, including most of the downtown area, was under water. Mays Island — which included the Cedar Rapids city hall, Linn County courthouse, county jail and federal courthouse — was flooded to the second-floor level. In addition to damaging more than 5,000 houses and 1,000 businesses, the flood caused tremendous disruption to the city’s utilities. Electricity and natural gas were cut off. Telephone and Internet service were also disrupted.
And amid the chaos, another problem became painfully obvious: Emergency responders in three key areas affected by the flood — Linn County, Cedar Rapids and Marion — could not communicate with each other because each of them operated on disparate radio systems.
“The flood exposed significant flaws in our emergency communications,” said Linn County Sheriff Brian Gardner. “It affected our efforts to evacuate neighborhoods. And the police and sheriff’s departments took a massive number of phone calls simply because officers couldn’t talk to each other on the same radio frequency.”
The communication challenges first responders in Cedar Rapids faced during the floods germinated over a number of decades. Years ago, the police departments in Cedar Rapids, Linn County and Marion could talk to each other using low-band radio. But in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the jurisdictions went their separate ways, according to Gardner.
“The cities of Marion and Cedar Rapids moved to UHF, and Linn County went to VHF. At that point, Cedar Rapids and Marion could continue to talk to each other, but Linn County could not,” Gardner said. “Things stayed that way until around 2000 when the city of Cedar Rapids moved over to [800 MHz]. From then on out, all three of us were on separate, disparate radio systems and no one could directly communicate with each other.”
With Linn County on VHF, Cedar Rapids on 800 and Marion on UHF, communication was possible, but certainly not easy.
“You would radio to dispatch, we would call your dispatch, they would call their officer, their officer would relay back to their dispatcher, their dispatcher would relay back to us and we would relay back to our officer,” said Joe McCarville, public safety dispatch assistant manager for Cedar Rapids.
“We were like the poster child for disparity,” said Charlie McClintock, communications director for the Joint Communications Agency of the Cedar Rapids Police Department. “We could utilize a computer tool that allowed us to patch frequencies from each of the different bands together so we could talk in an emergency, but it was just one frequency. It was very cumbersome, and if it was a larger event, having just the one frequency really didn’t work very well.”
Efforts to remedy the situation had been attempted several times over the years, but were always stalled or hit a roadblock. The floods made it painfully obvious that something had to change. So in 2009, Gardner along with then-Cedar Rapids Police Chief Greg Graham and Marion Police Chief Harry Daugherty approached the Linn County Board of Supervisors and the Cedar Rapids and Marion city councils to explain the need for a new communications system.
With an impending narrow banding mandate from the FCC and an 800 MHz system on “life support” because of the lack of available new parts, it was time to act, Gardner said. “It was the perfect time to work together and move toward one seamless radio system for all first responders.”
Gardner, Graham and Daugherty got permission from their jurisdictions’ governing bodies to hire a research firm to evaluate whether it would be fiscally responsible to invest in a joint communications system. After passing that test, an RFP was created and the project went to bid. The eventual winner was Harris Corp. of Melbourne, Fla., which proposed an 800 MHz P25IP digital trunked radio system.
In February 2014, Cedar Rapids, Marion and all of Linn County began using the new radio system, allowing for a more coordinated response to emergencies and other calls for service.
The system infrastructure costs, which totaled $19.2 million, were split among the entities (Cedar Rapids 50 percent, Linn County 30 percent and Marion 20 percent), with each being responsible for the purchase of its own portable and mobile radios. In addition, Linn County purchased radios for nearly all other emergency responders located in the county, outside of Cedar Rapids and Marion.
About 2,000 portable and mobile radios are on the new system, which, beyond law enforcement, fire and EMS, includes the Linn County juvenile detention, health, LIFTS transportation system for elderly and disabled citizens, and the secondary roads and conservation departments.
Building the new system had its challenges. For example, tower sites and microwave shots were built out, but by the time they were ready to be turned on, interferences had emerged. The primary instance involved shooting through a landfill area. The landfill had long ago been closed, but in order to accommodate the massive amount of debris created by the flood damage, it was temporarily reopened and grew significantly.
“We had to go back and re-angle our antennas,” McClintock said. “It was something we didn’t see coming because the landfill was decommissioned. It’s stuff like that you never think is going to happen that can put a wrench in your plans.”
The new system also came with unexpected benefits. For example, the same Harris 800 MHz P25 digital trunked radio system is also used in Johnson County. This facilitated the creation of a Linn/Johnson County corridor radio system that enables emergency responders from both counties to smoothly communicate with each other.
“The Harris system was already in existence in Johnson County south of us, so we were able to piggyback on their system,” Gardner said. “We each have our own controllers so we can operate independently of each other, but we were able to use each other’s infrastructure.”
That creates a seamless corridor, so in theory a firefighter in extreme northwest Linn County could talk to a police officer in extreme eastern Johnson County on the same system.
“We can handle each other’s call loads more efficiently too,” said Tom Jones, executive director of the Johnson County Joint Emergency Communications Center. “If a disaster similar to the floods happened today, we’d have the capacity to pick up that load better, and the strain on resources would be much less.”
The eventual goal is to add more counties to the system to enable a multiregion system.
“The more we add, the better we’ll be able to communicate,” Jones said. “That also means shared maintenance costs, which lowers the price for everyone.”
The most important aspect of the new joint communications system is that it has allowed emergency responders in Linn County, Cedar Rapids and Marion to talk to each other on the same radios and same frequency for the first time in 40 years. Should another flood hit the area, emergency personnel in the region are confident they’re better prepared.
“Everybody involved should see a benefit from being able to communicate,” McCarville said. “Everybody is listening to and hearing the same thing and that speeds up response.”
In addition, the system will make it easier to communicate with outside agencies that may volunteer to help during an emergency. During the flooding in the corridor, for example, Cedar Rapids police said Minnesota was generous enough to send officers to help. Unfortunately no one could communicate with the officers by radio to direct their efforts. With the new system, outside agencies can be more easily patched in so all parties can communicate and coordinate.
Given that Iowa is the “land between two rivers,” being prepared for the next potential flood or other natural disaster is critical.
“The stars just aligned correctly to make this happen — the flood, the narrow banding mandate and the willingness among the key players to work together to enable better communications,” Gardner said. “And it’s not just for emergencies. Day-to-day, this system will make it easier for us to communicate and accomplish our missions more effectively.”
This story was originally published by Emergency Management. | <urn:uuid:976958b0-4aee-4edf-a4c8-6e2d25211e4e> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.govtech.com/public-safety/Iowa-Responders-Break-the-Silence-with-New-Joint-Radio-System.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501174135.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104614-00039-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973213 | 1,860 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Many people think that cloud computing means their systems are out on the Internet for anyone to access (and attack). However, modern enterprises often use private clouds – or more commonly, virtual private clouds – to host workloads.
The term “private cloud” means that your organization owns and operates the cloud, and that only you access it. A “virtual” private cloud (VPC) shares infrastructure, but is designed to look like a private cloud. Typically, the shared data are similar to what’s shared in public cloud environments. However, in the case of a VPC, the components are configured in such a way that you appear to have an entire cloud to yourself. You will typically get your own dedicated network area, and you may even get your own physical machines and customized portal. Unlike a public cloud, where all of the machines can talk to each other by default, you often have to deliberately set up connectivity with the rest of the world.
From a security perspective, a VPC allows you to build in multiple layers of security more easily. You can have a “back end” area and a “front end” area, where the front end takes requests from the Internet and the back end will only talk to the front end. If you’re using a service provider that allows you to have your own dedicated physical machines, you are at much lower risk from hypervisor attacks, where one virtual machine on the system can steal information from others.
A VPC can also prevent problems. Just like noisy neighbors in an apartment building can irritate you, noisy neighbors on a cloud environment can cause trouble. If you happen to end up on the same physical machine as one of these party animals, you may find that your processes run more slowly (because the neighbor is taking up all of the CPU cycles) or that your network transfers or storage transfers are slow (because the neighbor is hogging those resources).
Not all VPCs are the same, so make sure that you pick one that has the characteristics you need. However, a VPC is a great way to get many of the benefits of a truly private cloud without the headaches of running a physical data center and putting up capital for all the systems. | <urn:uuid:39282e93-106a-48b1-88a1-4df1e7fae5b5> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/learn-more/what-is-virtual-private-cloud/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170794.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00027-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957788 | 459 | 3.046875 | 3 |
How can one cell display two possible values? By using a logical function. Each of these spreadsheet apps includes a number of logical functions; the three particularly useful ones below appear in all three apps.
The first one lets you sum numbers based on whether or not they satisfy a condition you define. =SUMIF(TEST_RANGE,CONDITION,OPTIONAL_SUM_RANGE) (If you leave out OPTIONAL_SUM_RANGE, then TEST_RANGE is also used as the range of values to sum.)
As an example, using the worksheet for the shipping supplies company, this formula will total the Qty On Hand column, adding only those items for which the Profit is more than $2.25: =SUMIF(D2:D8,">2.25",E2:E8).
In this formula, the Profit column (D2:D8) is compared to the test (is the value greater than 2.25?); if it's greater, then the amount in column E (E2:E8) is added to the sum.
The second function, SUMIFS, is related to SUMIF, but can take many optional pairs of test ranges and conditions: =SUMIFS(SUM_RANGE,TEST_RANGE,CONDITION1,TEST_RANGE2,CONDITION2, etc.).
For example, if you want the total quantity on hand for items with profit over $2.25 and build cost under $3.00, it would look like this: =SUMIFS(E2:E8,D2:D8,">2.25",B2:B8,"<3"). The formula will sum the Qty On Hand column (E2:E8), but only if both the profit (D2:D8) is over $2.25 (">2.25"), and if the Build Cost (B2:B8) is under $3.00 ("<3").
The third (and, for me, most often-used) logical function you should know how to use is the simple IF function. Using IF is a great way to vary cell results based on conditions being met or not being met. The syntax is pretty simple: =IF(CONDITION,RESULT_IF_TRUE,RESULT_IF_FALSE).
As one example, consider the worksheet of the shipping supplies company; the Order Alert column consists of nothing but IF statements that all look like this one from cell G2: =IF(E2/F2<1.25,"Order Soon!","").
The condition being tested is whether or not the ratio of the number of items on hand to the reorder point is less than 1.25 (125 percent). If it is, it's time to order, and the "Order Soon!" warning appears. If it's not, then all is fine, and we leave the cell empty by specifying an empty string as the False result.
IF statements can get very complicated, as they can be nested and can include not just static text, but also references to other cells, or even ranges of cells.
8. Mix Text and Formula Results
In the section on number formatting, I explained how to add text to a custom number format (in Excel and Sheets; not in Numbers). While this works, there are other ways of mixing text and numeric results, thanks to string-based formulas.
Consider our hypothetical shipping supplies company again. Assume you want to prepare a report for management, showing the total investment (Build Cost X Quantity On Hand) for a given product. Of course you could quickly do the math and then type out an email with the details.
Instead of doing that yourself, though, you could have your spreadsheet app build the sentence for you:
"The total investment in Tape is $262.50 (we have 150 in stock at $1.75 each)."
To do this, you need a special character: the ampersand (&). The ampersand can be used to join one formula value, including text strings, to another.
So, for example, to build the sentence above (in any of the three apps), the formula would look like this:
="The total investment in "&A8&" is "&DOLLAR(B8*E8)&" (we have "&FIXED(E8,0)&" in stock at "&DOLLAR(B8,2)&" each)." The trick here is to use the DOLLAR and FIXED functions; these convert numbers to text that looks like numbers; the DOLLAR version function automatically formats in currency, complete with the dollar sign.
9. Use Conditional Formatting
As covered earlier, you can format numbers, text, and cells in all three of these spreadsheet apps. But all three share a limitation when using traditional formatting: once something is formatted, it retains that format regardless of what might happen to the data in the cell. If you're creating the line dividers in your table of data, this isn't much of a problem. But if you're trying to highlight a specific type of number (when you reach the inventory-order point, say), then fixed formatting isn't much help.
That's when conditional formatting is really handy. It's just what it sounds like: Formatting that changes based on conditions you specify. Numbers refers to this feature as Conditional Highlighting, and you'll find it in the Cell tab of the Format sidebar. Both Excel and Sheets refer to it as Conditional Formatting, and you'll find it with that name in the Format menu of both apps.
Conditional formatting is a complex topic; to fully explore it requires many more words than we have here. But as one example of what it can do for you, consider the IF function example, used earlier to fill in the Order Alert column. Instead of having the formula simply display an alert when supplies are low, we can modify the formula to display a message stating that there's plenty of inventory. That change is simple: =IF(E2/F2<1.25,"Order Soon!","Stock OK").
Ideally, the Order Soon! alert should be bold and red. But that doesn't make sense for Stock OK; that might be better rendered as light green and not boldfaced. By creating a conditional highlighting/formatting rule, it's possible to change the cell's format based on the value.
Excel: Select the range from G2 to G8 (in this example), then select the Format > Conditional Formatting menu item. In the new window that appears, click the plus sign (to add a new rule). When the New Formatting Rule window appears, set the Style pop-up to Classic, which will open yet another window (that's three windows, and you haven't even created a single rule yet).
In this newest window, leave the Style pop-up set to Classic, then set the second pop-up to Format Only Cells That Contain. Set the next two pop-ups to Specific Text and Containing, and then type Order Soon! in the text box. Set the Format With pop-up to Custom Format, which will open a fourth window. Click on the Font tab, and set the Color pop-up to red, and click the Bold entry in the Font Style box. Make sure nothing is filled in on the Border and Fill tabs, then click OK (to close the fourth window), and click OK again (to close the third).
Now do the same thing again, starting with the plus-sign click. But this time, set the text box entry to Stock OK, set the font color to green, and make sure the font style is normal, not bold. When you get back to the Manage Rules window, you should see both rules listed; click OK to (finally!) apply the rules.
Numbers: Select the range of cells (G2:G8), then click the Conditional Highlighting button on the Cell tab of the Format sidebar. This will change the sidebar; click the Add A Rule button to display a pop-up list of rules, then click the Text tab. Click the Is entry, set the first pop-up to Text Is, and type Order Soon! in the box. Click the triangle in the menu below the text entry box, and select the final entry, Custom Style.
This will add yet another panel to the sidebar; select a red tone in the color wheel, and click on the B button for bold text. Finally, click Done.
That formats the Order Soon! cells. But what about the Stock OK messages, which are presently just black text? With the G2:G8 range still selected, click Show Highlighting Rules in the sidebar, then click Add a Rule again. Repeat the steps as above, except change the text box to read Stock OK, and set the custom style to have nonbolded green text. Click Done, and you'll see both bold red and normal green text in the cell.
Sheets: Select the G2:G8 range, then select the Format > Conditional Formatting menu item. In the dialog box that appears, set the first pop-up to Text Contains, then type Order Soon! in the text box. Check the Text box to format the text, then click the next seemingly empty box to the right in order to display the color picker; choose a nice shade of red. You might also want to check the Background box and set a background color (bright yellow will get your attention), because Sheets doesn't let you alter the font's appearance with conditional formatting.
Click the Add Another Rule link, and repeat the steps, but type Stock OK in the text box, and use green for the text color. After you've set up the second rule, click Save Rules to see the results of your work.
This story, "Nine things everyone should know how to do with a spreadsheet" was originally published by Macworld. | <urn:uuid:4c4b17aa-178a-40d0-91c5-5d3dcdd2d2bb> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.itworld.com/article/2696471/customer-relationship-management/nine-things-everyone-should-know-how-to-do-with-a-spreadsheet.html?page=6 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171043.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00203-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901486 | 2,103 | 2.59375 | 3 |
In early 2006, a dozen staff members from the California Department of Health Services received extensive training on how to administer antibiotics from the Strategic National Stockpile in the event of an anthrax attack.
Unlike previous exercises the state had run, however, this simulation didn't involve recruiting mock patients or setting up a staging area. The setting - and patients - were all virtual. Researchers from the University of California-Davis Health System re-created a 3-D model of the California Exposition and State Fair in Second Life, an Internet-based world in which people are represented by virtual body doubles called avatars.
"The aim of the exercise was to see if the state could constantly train people in setting up emergency clinics," explained principal investigator Dr. Peter Yellowlees, a professor of psychiatry at UC-Davis, whose research interests include the use of virtual reality for health education on the Internet. "One big advantage is that they could do this training 24/7 from wherever they are, and you don't have to recruit patient volunteers."
Yellowlees isn't alone in seeing the potential of using virtual reality simulation to train first responders, medical personnel and emergency management officials. Across the country, researchers are exploring how simulations can augment training efforts. Much of the impetus is coming from the growing use of simulation in medical training. Most medical schools are incorporating simulation in their curricula and measuring its effectiveness.
Another driving force is the U.S. Department of Defense, which for years has been funding research about computer simulation for war fighting and medical purposes. Research to support military operations done by organizations such as the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center is being customized for homeland security exercises.
Robert Furberg, a research analyst for the Center for Simulator Technology at research institute RTI International in Research Triangle Park, N.C., noted that virtual reality simulations are appealing for emergency response training.
"A full-scale exercise takes a lot of advanced preparation and requires daylong drills - it is expensive and time-consuming," he said. "With simulation, we can run through a mass casualty event and change the parameters. Each case is a little different, and it is available 24/7."
With an $80,000 grant from the California Department of Health Services, Yellowlees and his staff sought to determine if they could make the training in Second Life realistic and worthwhile for emergency medical personnel.
Two years ago, they went to a real-life simulation held at the Sacramento Exposition Center, with 250 state employees and 1,000 members of the public volunteering as trial patients. Yellowlees and his crew taped the exercise as patients were registered, signed consent forms, were examined and given simulated antibiotics.
They then worked to re-create the environment in Second Life. Virtual patients flowed through the clinic, while staff members role played. The program can be adjusted to simulate different numbers of patients. For instance, it could be ramped up from 100 to 150 patients per hour. Yellowlees said his team also built quiz tools to assess how well people have grasped what they've learned.
He said he believes the project was a success because they made the virtual environment look reasonably like the real thing. Also, feedback from state employees indicated the program worked quite well. Nevertheless, California has yet to expand its use. "That was 18 months ago and they haven't taken us up on it yet," he added. "They are trying to see how it fits into their long-term goals."
Virtual Reality Triage
With funding from the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center, RTI has been working for several years on a simulation platform for primary care doctors, nurses and paramedics. A virtual reality simulation that runs on a basic laptop computer allows medical workers to study and
practice their triage skills in a role-playing game.
The entire system is situated within a learning management system that includes didactic content, such as Flash animations and audio narratives that medical workers review before entering the simulation environment.
The program includes 30 examples of casualties that trainees can encounter, with a total of nine in any one scene. "The bulk of the cases are trauma victims, but we are adding in medical cases," said Furberg, who is a practicing paramedic. "Realistically people are going to be injured by more than kinetic forces. Someone will be so freaked out, they have a heart attack. Or a diabetic person will forget to eat. These have to be triaged as appropriately as everyone else in the mix of injuries."
The triage simulator has been used at pre-deployment training of Army medical staff on their way to Iraq. RTI also developed a program to train civilian Iraqi primary care physicians to use the Simple Triage and Rapid Treatment method.
Furberg's efforts to localize the content of that simulation led him to a startling realization. "I was looking to make it appropriate for local learners and asked a few contacts in Baghdad to send a picture of a triage tag doctors use in Iraq that I could insert in the simulation," he recalled.
When he got no response within a week, he contacted them again. His Green Zone contacts said they had asked several Iraqis and no one knew what Furberg meant by color-coded triage tags. "They said in Baghdad they don't do triage. They just load all the wounded into a van and sort them out at the hospital," he said. "Apparently for these emergency physicians, this simulation was the first time they were getting any formal triage training."
The triage simulator also was tested at the Duke University School of Medicine in 2006. In a program designed to prepare medical students for disaster management, some students were trained using verbal presentations while others used virtual reality-based training. Furberg said that when asked to perform triage, the trainees who used the simulator performed as well, or better than, the group trained traditionally.
Furberg is convinced that virtual reality simulation is a valid educational method for triage training, and that it should be carried over to widespread civilian use.
"It is a high-yield way of upgrading skills with minimal investment upfront," he said, adding that triage in an emergency situation challenges the standards of normative care. It asks emergency physicians and other care providers to make decisions they don't normally need to make.
Also, he argued that these are perishable cognitive skills. To apply them effectively, you have to use them. "If there is one skill that could maximize or improve the outcome in a mass casualty incident, it's triage," he added. "It drives the remainder of the response."
Running Simulations for EOCs
While some simulations are designed to help first responders practice, others use modeling to train people in emergency operation centers (EOCs). The Emergency Management Training, Analysis and Simulation Center (EMTASC) in Suffolk, Va., works to create realistic simulations to help train managers to communicate in an emergency.
"You've got a guy driving in to the EOC who hasn't sat in that chair in more than six months," explained Randy Sickmier, EMTASC's exercise plans manager. "During the day, he's the public works officer for Staunton, Va., and all of a sudden he's in charge of some aspect of this emergency response. It's not something he does every day. This is where the simulation can be valuable."
With grant funding from Virginia, the nonprofit EMTASC was formed in 2005 as a partnership between Old Dominion University and 17 companies involved in modeling and simulation efforts. For agencies that want to
include simulations in their EOC exercises, EMTASC can model an incident such as a hurricane and feed emergency response managers data in the same format they would receive it during an emergency.
Officials in Virginia, who run an annual training effort called the Virginia Emergency Response Team Exercise, have taken advantage of the modeling capability, said Sickmier, who is an employee of Northrop Grumman Corp., on loan to EMTASC.
In one training scenario, the agency modeled plans to reverse traffic on Interstate 64 so that all traffic would be outbound during a hurricane evacuation. "We modeled the capacity of the roadways with maps and data from the Virginia Department of Transportation and the state emergency management plan," Sickmier said. "It allowed the team to assess how long it would take to evacuate a certain region."
Although users' response has been enthusiastic, Sickmier admits that finding customers among state and local emergency response organizations has been difficult so far.
"Localities are always going to have difficult funding decisions to make," he said. "It's tough for them to make the choice between spending on hardware such as radios versus more information or training.
But as the models are developed through federal grant funding, Sickmier said, other regions will be able to adopt it at lower cost, and then modify them for their particular environment.
"Every time you do it," he said, "it gets cheaper." | <urn:uuid:08ad6aac-f1c7-4006-b658-1d158fee6ca7> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.govtech.com/health/Virtual-Worlds-Help-Public-Safety-Officials.html?page=3 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171251.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00379-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973271 | 1,840 | 2.59375 | 3 |
October 31, 2011
Boo! It’s Halloween and also the end of National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Our phones are so spookily important to us that 80% of you who responded to our Facebook poll said you’d go without either coffee, TV or chocolate rather than give up your smartphone for a month. To keep our most precious mobile devices safe, we’ve had a full month of spreading awareness of simple steps to secure your phone and the sensitive data you put on it.
National Cyber Security Month by the numbers:
Here’s a recap of our tips to secure your smartphone. Don’t be spooked of the bogeymen of stolen data or hacked phones when you take a few simple precautions.
- Set a passcode for your phone. We love this xkcd comic about setting a strong password.
- Use discretion when downloading apps, especially when downloading from 3rd party markets. Always check the permissions the app is asking for and the developer’s name, ratings and reviews.
- Refrain from using unsecured Wifi; it’s like sending your sensitive data over the air in a clear envelope so anyone could see the contents. If you are really dying of boredom at the airport, just window shop, avoid email, online shopping and social networks.
- Keep your phone’s software up to date. Operating system updates often include patches to known security vulnerabilities.
- Download a mobile security app like Lookout, available for Android or iPhone mobile security.
Just because National Cyber Security Awareness Month is ending doesn’t mean you can revert to bad habits like downloading shady apps or leaving your phone lying around without a passcode. Our smartphones and tablets are mini computers we rely on everyday. Spreading awareness for safe smartphone usage is an ongoing effort that involves everyone. Continue to share our tips with your friends and family—because cyber security awareness doesn’t end today—it lasts all year long!
*Photos courtesy: Gadgetsin.com and Applegazette.com.
October 28, 2011
The year was 2003. Our 8th grade valedictorian was deep into her very own “this is our time” graduation speech, but she lost me at “My fellow graduates.” I was too busy fantasizing about the sleek, cutting-edge Motorola cell phone that awaited me after I got my meaningless Middle School diploma. She was really something— fully stocked with a color screen, alarm clock, and insanely long battery life, my first cell phone will forever hold a special place in my heart.
Fast forward almost ten years later, and kids yet to hit puberty are sporting mobile devices that have revolutionized the way people communicate. Yes, in the year 2011, the smartphone is king. But even kings have their flaws. True, my first cell phone didn’t act as a flashlight or tell me how to tie a tie, but at least it didn’t have inconvenient two-a-day charging sessions. Smartphone battery life, or lack thereof, is a common complaint amongst most users. So how can someone enjoy Google and Apple’s gifts to mankind when they’re plugged into a wall three hours a day? You can’t— at least not fully.
Now, rumor has it that Lookout is a no-no for people who are concerned with battery life. Some claim that because our program runs quietly in the background during routine maintenance, it’s constantly draining energy from your smartphone without you knowing it. Objection! While it is true that Lookout performs daily/weekly scans or backups depending on your preference, our studies show that in these cases battery exhaustion is the power equivalent of making a 30-second phone call. Frequent use of the find my phone feature (and I’m talking daily) will have a more noticeable effect because of the GPS connection requirement, but even this takes just three minutes. Not to worry, that’s like listening to one song on Pandora.
For those who may be skeptical of Lookout’s internal battery testing, take a look at this Reddit post. This user was able to keep their HTC Wildfire running for 29 days without a single charge. And what did they have running in the background? Lookout Mobile Security, of course. So rest easy my fellow smartphoners, and consider the Lookout battery exhaustion myth busted!
October 27, 2011
Cupcake. Eclair. Gingerbread. Ice Cream Sandwich. All delicious treats in their own right, these sugary desserts have something else in common— they’re Android OS versions. Creativity aside, the importance of updating your smartphone to the latest version often gets overlooked by users who are unaware of the benefits. Whether they are iOS or Android, big or small, updates do much more than speed up your device or tweak your user interface. They often contain critical security patches that make sure your Android or iPhone doesn’t become a hacker’s playground.
Android updates are pushed to people over-the-air. You, the user, will see a notification on the home screen prompting you to accept the update. To check the success of an install or to update your Android manually, follow these 4 simple steps:
1. Push the “Menu” button from the Home screen.
2. Touch the screen or use the navigator wheel to select the “Settings” option.
3. With the “Settings” menu, select the “About Phone” option that is found towards the bottom of the list.
4. Touch the “System Updates” option. This causes the phone to look for any new Android updates. If an update is available, the phone will download and install it. If your system is up-to-date, then it will tell you that as well.
With the release of iOS5, Apple has also instituted the over-the-air update process too. Yet if a user’s phone is running on an older operating system, iPhone users need to physically connect their device to their computers and follow these directions:
1. Verify that you are using the latest version of iTunes (before connecting your iOS device).
2. Select your iOS device when it appears in iTunes under Devices.
3. Select the Summary tab.
4. Click “Check for Update.”
Along with checking for software updates, downloading a mobile security app like Lookout is another crucial step in protecting your phone. Just as you protect your PC, you should protect your phone against malware and spyware. When you download new apps, shop online, browse social networks, or use your phone for banking, security apps like ours will be there to protect you. So do your small part, download a security app and make sure your smartphone is always running on the most up-to-date operating system.
October 26, 2011
With more than 63 million estimated to sell in 2011, tablets are unquestionably this year’s must-have device. If you don’t already own a tablet, you’re probably thinking—or dreaming—about buying one. Whether you own one now or are planning to purchase a tablet this holiday, keeping your tablet safe and secure will be top of mind.
Whether it’s WiFi-Only or it Has a Data Plan, We’ve Got You Covered.
At Lookout, we know tablets are the new mobile frontier, so we made our same smartphone security protection and find-my-phone functionality available on any tablet or iPad—including Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich and WiFi-only tablets. So regardless of which kind of tablet or iPad you have, you can keep your device safe.
Already Have Lookout on Your Smartphone? Manage Your Tablet from the Same Lookout Account. If you’re already using Lookout on your smartphone, you can now easily add a tablet to your account so all of your mobile devices are managed in one place at lookout.com. Also, Lookout automatically updates over-the-air, making it easier on you to keep your most personal devices safe.
So if you’re touting a tablet, secure it with Lookout! The Lookout Mobile Security app is available for download in the App Store or Android Market for free.
Your tablet is just as important as your phone (and likely has a higher price tag) so we wouldn’t recommend on skimping to keep it safe!
October 21, 2011
The moment we’ve all been waiting for is almost here. A stunning upgrade to the Android operating system is just a few weeks away. Ice Cream Sandwich will be shipping on the stylish and blazingly fast Samsung Galaxy Nexus in November. In May, Google announced a commitment with every major carrier and device manufacturer to support upgrading capable devices to the latest version of Android for 18 months after the device ships, so hopefully we’ll all be seeing Ice Cream Sandwich on our own devices soon, too!
Ice Cream Sandwich is a feature-packed release alongside an entire redesign of the Android UI. Some of the noteworthy improvements include:
Improved multitasking. Ice Cream Sandwich allows you to see all open apps simultaneously and easily close apps you are done with by swiping them off the screen.
Single-motion panoramic photos. Take a large panoramic photo by simply moving your camera slowly from one side to the other.
Real-time voice dictation. Watch text appear in any input field as you speak naturally.
These are just some of the many features in Ice Cream Sandwich that I’m excited about. But we here at Lookout don’t just love our phones; we also love anything that makes our phones safer. There are a few ways in which Ice Cream Sandwich should help give you more control over your phone and keep your most personal computer and most personal data safe.
Owner info in the lock screen: You can now optionally include a personal message on your lock screen in case you lose your phone and someone else finds it and the screen is locked (you do have a passcode set, right)? This should help increase the chances and reduce the time it takes to recover a lost device. If you wish to include contact details in your message, remember not to use your cell phone number (unless it’s a Google Voice number you can check from another source).
Full device encryption: You can encrypt the entirety of your phone and this feature will be available for all your Android devices running Ice Cream Sandwich. Once your device is encrypted it will be very difficult for anyone to access any of your data without knowing your PIN or passcode. The setup takes about an hour to do and is not reversible without factory resetting your phone. Also you should be aware that if you forget your passcode there is no “Lost Password” button and all your data will be lost permanently (you can still factory reset your device though).
Enhanced Control/Management of Apps
Prior to Ice Cream Sandwich, if an app was preloaded on a mobile device, users were unable to remove these applications. Now, users will have two options at their disposal:
Disable preloaded apps: While you can’t uninstall preloaded applications since they are on the system partition of the device, you can now disable them. A disabled app cannot launch, access any information or even display an icon in your App Tray. It’s inoperable unless you re-enable it.
Disable background data for specific apps: If background data is disabled for an application, it can now only access the network if it’s currently running in the foreground. While this feature seems to be intended to prevent a data-hogging app from using all your bandwidth if you’re not lucky enough to be on an unlimited data plan, it can also be used to protect your private information. For example, Google Maps needs access to your location while you are engaging with the app. But if you’d prefer it not collect and send information about you while you aren’t interacting with it, you can disable background data for the specific app. A word of warning though: just because an application can’t access your network doesn’t mean it can’t send data over WiFi.
My face is my passport, verify me:
Step aside standard number and swipe unlock codes: Ice Cream Sandwich will allow users to unlock their phones using facial recognition. Users will simply point the phone’s camera at their face to unlock their device. If it doesn’t recognize you (because you are in the dark, shaved your beard, got plastic surgery or are wearing too much makeup) then it will ask for an unlock code. (Note: there has been some speculation that you will be able to bypass this lock by pointing the camera at a good picture of the person in question: Tim Bray, a Developer Advocate for Android, insists via Twitter that you can’t unlock it with a photograph).
I’ll reserve my judgment on this feature until I get a chance to play with it, as it is not included in the emulators that shipped with the Android 4.0 SDK as far as I can tell.
Overall, I think including your contact details on your lock screen, being able to encrypt your whole device and the enhanced control over applications included in Ice Cream Sandwich’s new security features look to offer enhanced protection for the Android platform. As an Android user, I can’t wait for Ice Cream Sandwich to start rolling onto my favorite Android devices. As a developer I can’t wait to get started playing around with the new APIs to deliver great new features to Lookout Mobile Security!
October 20, 2011
Recently, Lookout identified a new Android Trojan, LeNa, which is an evolution of the Legacy variant discovered earlier this year (also known as DroidKungFu). Previous Legacy variants were spotted only in alternative app markets and forums in China, collecting various details about users’ Android devices. More recently, we discovered a variant of Legacy, which we are calling LegacyNative (LeNa) that was predominately found in alternative Chinese Markets, but a couple instances were also found on the Android Market. LeNa has similar capabilities as its predecessors, but it uses new techniques to gain a foothold on mobile devices.
All Lookout users are already protected against LeNa. We let Google know about the variants and all LeNa infected apps were promptly removed from the Android Market.
How it Works
Unlike its predecessors, LeNa does not come with an exploit to root the device, rather it requests privileged access on a pre-rooted device. On un-rooted devices, it offers “helpful” instructions on how to root the phone. In some samples, LeNa is re-packaged into apps (a VPN management tool, for instance) that could conceivably require root privileges to function properly. Other samples attempt to convince the user that root access is required to update. Once the user grants LeNa with root privileges, it starts its infection process in the background, while performing the advertised application tasks in the foreground.
Once on a user’s device, the Trojan takes a different tactic than previously seen to infect and launch the malware. LeNa hides itself inside an application that is native to the device (an ELF Binary). This is the first time an Android Trojan has relied fully on a native ELF binary as opposed to a typical VM-based Android application. In essence LeNa trojanizes the phone’s system processes, latching itself onto an application that is native to the device and critical to making the phone function properly.
Our analysis shows it having a number of malicious capabilities after requesting root access:
- Communicating with a command and control (C & C) server
- Downloading, installing and opening applications
- Initiating web browser activity
- Updating installed binaries, and more.
While analyzing and watching LeNa, we’ve seen quite a few things that were pushed by the server. One of the applications being pushed by the C&C server was a DroidDream infected application. This may show a possible correlation between the creators of the DroidDream/DroidDreamLight variants of Android malware and the Legacy variants.
Click here for the complete technical teardown on LeNa.
Who is affected?
Though LeNa has primarily been distributed through third-party markets, a handful of samples were removed from the Android Market. Among the infected apps are One Key VPN and Easy VPN. In total, LeNa was repackaged in over 40 applications, often utility applications (VPN app, a Reader app, security application, etc.).
How to Stay Safe
- Only download apps from trusted sources, such as reputable app markets. Remember to look at the developer name, reviews, and star ratings.
- Always check the permissions an app requests. Use common sense to ensure that the permissions an app requests match the features the app provides.
- Be alert for unusual behavior on your phone. This behavior could be a sign that your phone is infected. These behaviors may include unusual SMS or network activity.
- Download a mobile security app for your phone that scans every app you download to ensure it’s safe. Lookout users automatically receive protection against this Trojan.
October 19, 2011
As part of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, we have been reminding our users to treat their smartphones and tablets as mini-computers. Just like your computer, your smartphone has access to WiFi networks. A quick Google search for “public WiFi” will give you plenty of articles with tips on how to stay safe while on public WiFi on your PC, like this slideshow from PC Mag. But how do you make sure the data on your phone is protected as well?
Public WiFi networks, the kind you find for free in coffee shops and airports, are usually unsecured; this means that all of the data sent over the network is unencrypted. Sending data unencrypted (e.g. via HTTP rather than HTTPS) is like sending your sensitive data in clear envelope so that everyone can see its contents rather than in an opaque envelope. So while the free Internet connection may seem convenient, if you are connected to an unencrypted network, anyone with the right tools would be able to see where you are surfing, the emails you are sending, and potentially even the passwords that you enter.
The key to securing the activity on your phone from prying eyes is pretty simple: you need to encrypt it. Here are 7 actions you can take to ensure you are surfing the web in the safest way possible:
If possible, connect to an encrypted WiFi network. In general, a network that requires a password is safer than a network without a password because of the encryption. Just because you are paying for Wi-Fi, that doesn’t mean it is secure, anyone with the same password could potentially access your data. Tip: Many people think that paid WiFi hotspots are more secure than free hotspots. While this may be somewhat true, just because you are paying for WiFi doesn’t mean it is secure – paid hotspots are almost always unencrypted and just use a captive Web portal to prevent access if you haven’t paid yet.
Let your device forget any public networks to which you have previously connected. To prevent reconnection:
- On Android: Go to Settings > Wireless & networks > WiFi settings > Click on the open network name and hold down until you see a menu, then click “Forget Network”
- On iPhone: Go to Settings > WiFi > Click on the blue arrow next to the network name and then select “Forget this Network” at the top of the page
Use encrypted websites
Even if you aren’t able to connect to a secure WiFi network, you can still protect your data by using websites with SSL encryption (note: the URL will start with HTTPS instead of HTTP are encrypted). You will also see a lock next to the URL that lets you know your data is protected. Check out this video of Lookout’s CTO, Kevin Mahaffey, giving a demonstration on how to ensure you are using SSL encryption whenever possible.
Use your data connection
When you are away from your home or work network, you can’t go wrong with using your 3G or 4G cell data connection instead. Even though it is a little slower and it uses your battery more than sending data over WiFi, it is a secure connection. Most cell service providers encrypt the traffic between cell towers and your device, so you can send emails and check your bank account balance with the peace of mind that your data is secure.
Download a security app that notifies you as soon as you connect to an unsecured WiFi hotspot. iPhone users can download Lookout to alert them if they connect to an unsecured WiFi hotspot that could expose their personal data and passwords.
Only window shop
If you can’t take any of the actions above to protect your data, you can still surf the web, but we recommend that you wait until you are on a secure connection to transmit sensitive data. Just imagine that a stranger is looking over your shoulder the whole time and can see everything that you do on your phone – and don’t do anything that you wouldn’t want them to see!
Consider using VPN if your device supports it
For those of you that may be a bit more tech-savvy, the most secure way you can connect to WiFi on your phone is through a VPN, because all of your data is sent through an encrypted tunnel. Both Android and iOS include VPN support, and this article from eSecurityPlanet gives you some quick options for how to set it up.
The great thing about the Internet is the ability to be connected and online 24/7. There is an unlimited amount of information at our fingertips and we can easily communicate with anyone at the click of a button. But with this connectivity comes security risk when it comes to your personal information. We just want to make sure that you aware of the security risks so you can keep your data and your phone protected.
October 18, 2011
You go everywhere and do everything with your iPhone – it’s your social calendar, your address book, your photo bragbook, your checkbook, and your touchstone to the outside world. As much as we love and rely on our iPhones we want to keep them safe, and keeping your iPhone safe should be simple. That’s why we built Lookout for iPhone as a single, easy to use app that keeps your iPhone safe and secure. Now you can download it for free from the Apple App Store.
When developing Lookout for iPhone, we focused on the issues most important to iPhone users. In a recent survey by Javelin Research, we found that 93% of iPhone users have concerns about the security of data stored on their phones. In addition, four out every ten users are unsure about the security of public WiFi and more than a third of users do not regularly sync their iPhone. So we made sure that Lookout can quickly find your phone if it’s lost or stolen, back up your precious data without syncing, and help you avoid connecting to unsecured WiFi or other actions that might expose the personal information on your iPhone. We can also restore your data to a different smartphone or even an iPad or tablet.
Lookout unites complete security and privacy protection in a simple yet powerful app. Whether you’re concerned about a network connection, wondering about the security of the software on your phone, or have suddenly lost track of your iPhone, Lookout has you covered. You can always rely on Lookout to protect your phone and your personal information. Lookout for iPhone includes:
Missing Device. Lookout can quickly find your lost or stolen phone on a map and sound a loud alarm to find it nearby – even if it’s set on silent and stuck in the couch cushions!
Security. Never before could you keep your iPhone safe and secure with a single app. Lookout walks you through a few simple steps to protect your privacy and secure your iPhone.
- System Advisor notifies you of iPhone settings or software that could put your privacy at risk. Lookout tells you if your iPhone software is out-of-date, which could mean you are missing recent fixes to security vulnerabilities. It also lets you know if your iPhone is “Jailbroken” which could leave you more susceptible to security threats.
- Location Services enable you to take control of your privacy by showing you which apps can access your location, helping you make more informed decisions about the apps you download and keep.
- WiFi Security warns you if you connect to an unsecured WiFi network to ensure that you don’t expose sensitive personal data like passwords or account information.
Backup & Restore. With Lookout, your contacts are automatically backed up no matter where you are. Over-the-air backup means that your contacts are always safe – even when you haven’t had time to sync your iPhone. You can view your data on the secure Lookout website at any time and restore your data to the same iPhone or a new iPhone, other smartphone or iPad.
Management. Lookout for iPhone can help you keep tabs on all of your important mobile devices – from your iPhone or iPad to an Android phone or tablet – all from a single, easy to use dashboard on our secure website.
Stay tuned for more details on all the exciting and useful features in Lookout for iPhone later this week. In the meantime, try out our new app for your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch and tell us what you think! Lookout Mobile Security is now available for download in the App Store for FREE! Your iPhone is your lifeline, why wouldn’t you protect it?
October 17, 2011
There is a new scam being sent around on Twitter, very similar to a phishing scam written about in July by NakedSecurity. It all starts when you receive a Direct Message from a friend letting you know that a ‘bad blog’ has been published about you, along with a link that urges you to check it out.
If you click on the link, you are taken to a page that looks almost identical to the Twitter homepage. However, the URL of this webpage is twittler.com instead of twitter.com, which on a mobile device is even harder to distinguish because they are so small. If you mistake this fake page for the actual login screen and enter your login information, the people behind the phishing scam now have access to your account and can continue sending the scam to all of your Twitter contacts.
Many people are understandably worried after receiving a message that suggests there is a negative blog post written about them, and have fallen victim to this scam. If you were tricked don’t worry, you aren’t alone:
- Change your Twitter password immediately. If you use that password for other accounts, change them too and moving forward don’t use the same login for two different accounts
- Let all of your followers know about the scam and tell them not to click on any links from you
- Visit the Twitter Help Center for more tips
Some useful tips to stay safe in the future:
- Don’t click on a link if something looks fishy. (Tiny URLs are great to use on Twitter but you don’t always know where the link will lead you. A simple tool like LinkPeelr will help you get to the real destination of the link, and you can decide whether or not that destination is safe.)
- Use a strong password, and don’t use the same password for multiple websites.
- Follow Twitter’s @Spam and @Safety accounts for timely information on new scams.
- Download a security app like Lookout that reviews every link you click to make sure it’s safe.
October 13, 2011
A new Android phishing scheme posing as an unofficial Netflix app has been discovered outside of the official Android Market. The app asks for users’ Netflix usernames and passwords and sends them to a phishing server. The app was not posted to the Android Market, so the risk for most users is quite low.
When the app is launched, the user is presented with a login dialog requesting an email address and password. Instead of submitting those credentials to Netflix, the app collects the credentials and sends them to a remote server. This server now appears to be offline and unavailable. The app then presents an error screen to the user indicating incompatibility with the device.
While it is possible that the developers of this app sought access to Netflix accounts, we find it unlikely that that was the actual goal of the phishing scheme. Given the tendency of people to use the same password across many different accounts, we speculate that the authors sought to gather email addresses along with passwords that could likely be used to gain access into other accounts like email, Facebook, banking accounts and more.
Who Is Affected
The app seems to take advantage of the fact that the official Netflix Android application was not previously available for all Android devices. This app targets users who, due to being on a device that was unsupported by the official app, were looking for an alternative to watch Netflix movies. The official Netflix application has been available for some time, but it was only downloadable via the official Android Market by a restricted group of devices and platform versions, which Netflix said was due to wanting to provide the best possible experience for users.
With rumors circulating that the app actually does work on a broader range of platforms, users have extracted binaries and shared copies of the official application on Internet file sharing sites such as Mediafire.
How to Stay Safe
All Lookout users are already protected against this threat. If you have not downloaded an unofficial Netflix app outside of the Android Market, you are probably safe. If you believe you may have inadvertently downloaded this phishing app, you should change your Netflix password as well as any other passwords that shared that same password.
As always, we urge you to pay close attention to the apps you are downloading. Remember to:
- Only download applications from trusted sources, such as reputable application markets. Remember to look at the developer name, reviews, and star ratings.
- Always check the permissions an app requests. Use common sense to ensure that the permissions match the features the app provides.
- Be aware that unusual behavior on your phone or unexplained charges on your phone bill could be a sign that your phone is infected.
- Download a mobile security app for your phone that scans every app you download. Lookout users are automatically protected against this phishing app.
- Don’t share passwords across different logins. Create different passwords for all your online logins and avoid simplistic passwords, such as the last four digits of your phone number, or public information (birthday). As a general rule of thumb, if the passcode information may be available on Facebook—don’t use it for your code. | <urn:uuid:2a43d61e-0cca-489b-92a1-c6bf80104493> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://blog.lookout.com/blog/2011/10/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171251.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00379-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929728 | 6,432 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Deep in the dusty catalogs of weather stations and meteorological offices all over the world are hidden treasures. They're easy to miss if you're not looking for them—often taking the form of, well, piles of moldy papers. But on those pieces of paper are hundreds of years of weather records—data that could make climate science far more accurate.
The International Environmental Data Rescue Organization (IEDRO) estimates that there are 100 million paper strip charts—records that list weather conditions—sitting in meteorological storage facilities throughout the world. That’s about 200 million observations unused by scientists, data that could greatly improve their models. Now, a few small groups of scientists are trying digitize these records, but they’re facing all kinds of obstacles.
Climate scientists often bemoan the lack of historic records. There are the famous data sets: the Vostok ice core drilled in the 1970s that looks back about 400,000 years, the Keeling curve started in 1958, data from satellites that watch sea ice retreat starting around 1979. But these are spot points in specific places that only span a short amount of time. To truly understand climate, researcher need a global records that reaches back hundreds of years.
Those are the kinds of records that data-rescue organizations like IEDRO are trying to recover. “There’s data tied up in paper records that goes all the way back to the lat 1800s,” says Theodore Allen, a graduate student at the University of Miami and IEDRO volunteer. “So rather than working on observations from 1960 to present, we can work on things from 1880 to present.” With that kind of information, climate scientists can make their models far more reliable. The problem is that nobody wants to spend the time and money it takes to scan and input 100 million pieces of pieces of old, musky, often disorganized paper. “You’ll show up to a place and you need dust masks on for days at a time,” says Allen. “You’re crouched over running through dusty, dirty weather records in a damp room. It’s not very glamorous.”
Different groups have different strategies for so called “data rescue” projects. One group, called the Atmospheric Circulation Reconstruction over the Earth(ACRE) focuses on records in existing archives like the National Meteorological Services across Europe. They go into existing libraries to try and digitize the data that exists among the books. “It’s a bit of a detective effort,” says Rob Allen, the data rescue project manager at ACRE, “you have to be an archaeologist, detective, cartographer and climate scientist all in one.
The IEDRO teams take a different tack—searching for records in the back rooms at local weather stations all over the world. Instead of having their people do the scanning, IEDRO set up weather stations with their own scanners, and hires local people to do the digitizing. IEDRO focuses on creating local jobs around climate digitization projects, and once the project is complete the scanners and other equipment are donated to the weather station.
With either approach, the task entails hundreds of hours of scanning and data inputting. So both ACRE and IEDRO have started toying with crowdsourcing the data-input side of things. Once the pages are scanned, they upload them to sites like Old Weather, where volunteers can help the scientists and get "promoted" in a little game they’ve created.
The scope of this kind of data digitization has implications beyond climate science. An IEDRO project isn’t truly finished until the data is used to inform something like a local weather model, or flood recommendations, or city planning. The ACRE team plugs recovered climate data into current weather models to create pictures of what the global climate was like in, say, 1916.
Despite the clear value in this kind of work, keeping these projects alive has been hard. Everyone who works at IEDRO does so as a volunteer. Getting funding is difficult. For the cost of a single satellite, groups like IEDRO could digitize millions of pages. “There’s a lot more money and funding to produce modern climate products like these advanced climate models, than there is wallowing around in some third world pit of a storage shed and unearthing a bunch of paper records,” says Allen.
Soon, Allen will launch his own little project called “Data Safari”—a chronicle of his motorcycle trip throughout southern Africa in search of climate records to digitize. He'll spend sixty days traveling 10,000 kilometers searching for scraps of paper that might improve the climate record. It's work he'll do, as usual, on a volunteer basis. "One day," he says, "I would love to have this turn into a job." | <urn:uuid:059c3efa-cfd2-4275-8c8d-1e03f68cfc57> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.nextgov.com/big-data/2014/08/quest-scan-millions-weather-records/92414/?oref=ng-dropdown | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171646.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00555-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950242 | 1,015 | 3.921875 | 4 |
Researchers at the University of South Carolina have discovered that some types of electricity meter are broadcasting unencrypted information that, with the right software, would enable eavesdroppers to determine whether you're at home.
The meters, called AMR (automatic meter reading) in the utility industry, are a first-generation smart meter technology and they are installed in one third of American homes and businesses. They are intended to make it easy for utilities to collect meter readings. Instead of requiring access to your home, workers need simply drive or walk by a house with a handheld terminal and the current meter reading can be received.
While many gas and water AMR meters continuously listen for a query signal from a meter reading terminal and only transmit a reading when requested, the researchers found at least one type of electricity meter works on the opposite principle. It continuously sends a meter reading every 30 seconds around the clock.
"We had heard a lot about smart meters, about how great and how efficient they were," said Wenyuan Xu, an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina, speaking to IDG News Service. "We thought about privacy and wondered how secure are they meters currently in use."
It turns out, not very.
The tools were simple: a $1,000 Universal Software Radio Peripheral software-defined radio, an amplifier, and the freeware GNU Radio software, plus of course, the team's knowledge of wireless protocols and data processing.
The first job was capturing the data. The team found that the meters transmit every 30 seconds by hopping through a number of frequencies, but the cycle of frequencies chosen isn't random so the pattern can be predicted.
Then, with just a few days work, Xu and her team were able to deconstruct the proprietary protocol used by the meters thanks to documentation they found on the Internet and information freely disclosed by meter makers.
"Once we got the raw signal, we processed it, and reverse engineered it," she said.
Using an off-the-shelf antenna and amplifier, the researchers were able to capture packets from electricity meters at a distance of up to 300 meters. In the neighborhood where they tested, they were able to receive packets from 106 electric meters.
The data sent was in plain text and carried the identification number of the meter and its reading. The name of the home owner or the address aren't included, but anyone motivated enough could quickly figure out the source.
"The meter ID was printed on the front of the meter we looked at, so theoretically you could read the ID [off a target meter] and try to sniff packets," Xu said.
In her tests, Xu found she was able to pull packets out of the air from target meters between once every 2 to 10 minutes. That's fast enough to be able to work out the average power consumption of a house and notice start to deduce when someone is at home.
"Smart meters should be encrypted," said Xu.
The good news is a new generation of meters based on a more advanced technology, called AMI (advanced metering infrastructure), are supposed to employ encryption. Guidelines from the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Smart Grid Interoperability Panel made such a recommendation in a 2010 report.
"Should designers and manufacturers of smart meters or secondary devices decide to incorporate wireless technology for the purpose of communicating energy usage information, then that data must be securely transmitted and have privacy protection," the report said.
But that's too late for the AMR meters already installed across the U.S.
There are 46 million AMR meters in use in 2011, according to a U.S. Department of Energy report. That represents about one in three houses and businesses. While they are likely to be replaced with AMI meters, the slow upgrade cycle of utility companies could mean they remain in use for years to come.
It's unclear if all AMR meters behave the same way. Xu didn't want to reveal the maker of the meter her team targeted in case it spurs others to try the same thing.
There's also no evidence to suggest that burglars have ever used AMR meters as a way of predicting when a home owner will be present or away, but the research does highlight the potential nefarious uses of electricity consumption data and the need to ensure next-generation platforms are more secure.
A paper describing Xu's research can be found on her website.
Martyn Williams covers mobile telecoms, Silicon Valley and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Martyn on Twitter at @martyn_williams. Martyn's e-mail address is email@example.com | <urn:uuid:6493a69f-748b-4682-8cd5-bef53dbac3ed> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.cio.com/article/2390603/data-protection/smart-meters-not-so-clever-about-privacy--researchers-find.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501174163.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104614-00431-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961463 | 953 | 2.9375 | 3 |
People who used computers before the Mac recall how they were all about text -- green, light blue, or amber dot-matrix-style letters on a black background. Building on work at Xerox PARC, Apple changed that, bringing us a screen in which everything was a graphic, including its text. The Mac came with MacPaint, to make fact that crystal-clear. (You can still use the original Mac OS via James Friends' emulation website.)
Today, GUIs (graphical user interfaces) are the norm, whether in Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, and even ATMs, car stereos, and kiosks. Folder icons, trashcan icons, and the desktop concept came from the Mac. Thus, what we see and do on a computer is much more like the real world than before the Mac. | <urn:uuid:52252b5b-fdc0-44a6-85d5-03ae51ca65e0> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.cio.com/article/2369866/desktop-hardware/137126-The-debt-we-all-owe-the-Macintosh.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171053.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00552-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933393 | 170 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Jeff Kalwerisky, VP of Information Security & Technical Training at CPE Interactive, Inc
The Internet of Things is affecting pretty much everything and cars are in the vanguard of this change, as various players move their offerings and services inside more vehicles. Cars already offer 4G and WiFi connectivity, work smoothly with smart watches and smart phones, and provide access to masses of data, including real-time navigation. Beyond that there is a wider world of information services and content, not to mention information to help improve car care, security, and many other functions.
So-called V2V (Vehicle-to-Vehicle) technology is also on the way. V2V will allow all vehicles to communicate with one another, on road conditions, weather, traffic patterns, bottlenecks, etc. The goal is to improve road safety and ultimately avoid many crashes altogether by exchanging basic safety data, such as speed and position, many times per second. The technology is so promising that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is working on a regulatory proposal to require V2V devices in new vehicles in the future.
Self-driving or autonomous vehicles (AVs) will soon add to this flood of data. Google’s test fleet of AVs has driven over 700,000 accident-free highway and city miles – equivalent to several normal lifetimes of safe driving. Each car’s array of sensors, including cameras and lidar detectors, scan the road continuously, generating gigabits of data per second to be processed by the onboard computers.
Quite soon, your car’s seat will be the control terminal for a data center of the highway, a true rolling data center. The obvious question is: how secure will this tsunami of rolling data be and what are the legal and privacy implications?
This BrightTalk session will review the rolling data center concept from the viewpoint of cyber-security and data privacy and investigate the issues and likely effects on us as consumers. | <urn:uuid:ad047cfa-dc8e-4580-8d26-5181918663be> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/11263/90479 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171053.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00552-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938553 | 407 | 2.59375 | 3 |
In this article you will learn how install and setup apache tomcat under Linux / UNIX environments.
Before we begin installation of Apache tomcat on our Debian based operating system Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, you need to make sure that your hostname is correctly setup.
Note: This works under Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Ubuntu 13, CentOS / RHEL / Redhat Enterprise Linux, Debian 6 and Debian 7.
If you don’t know on how to set your machine hostname please refer to our previous article “How to setup hostname.”
In our case, our hostname is “example.com”
First, update your operating system’s repositories and then upgrade the packages installed. Please note we are running all commands from a sudo enabled user.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
What is Apache Tomcat?
Apache tomcat is a JAVA based web application server. It is one of the most widely used JAVA server and it is a web server and a servlet container for Java web applications.
The latest stable release of Apache Tomcat at the time of writing this article is 7 (May 2013). We will be using latest tarball from the Apache website.
We strongly recommend checking the Apache Tomcat website when installing as installing latest stable version has a lot of security and bug fixes which will help stabilize the server as well as the web application.
We will cover both installations automated installation using “apt-get” and installation from the tarball archive which is available on Apache Tomcat and this applies to other distributions as well “CentOS / RHEL / Redhat Enterprise Linux”
To download and install Apache Tomcat 7 under Debian / Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install tomcat7
To download and install Apache Tomcat 7 CentOS / RHEL / Redhat Enterprise Linux:
You can download latest stable version of Apache Tomcat from their website: http://tomcat.apache.org/download-70.cgi
Please remember to download tar.gz under the “Core” section of the download page.
We will download the latest stable tarball of Apache Tomcat 7
As the download completes, extract the tarball
tar xvzf apache-tomcat-7.0.40.tar.gz
If you want to run Apache Tomcat 7 under your home directory “~” you may remain this as it is. However if you want to run under some specific directory, you need to make it now before installation.
In this article we are moving our installation to the “/opt/” directory
sudo mv apache-tomcat-7.0.40 /opt/tomcat
We have now installed entire Apache tomcat 7 web server under /opt/tomcat directory. Before you start it, deploy it, or test any application, you need to install Java. This is because Apache Tomcat needs it to start or deploy any web application written in JAVA language.
To install Java:
sudo apt-get install default-jdk
Once JAVA (above) is installed, you need to edit your file toyou’re your environment variables. We are doing that for our user, if you intend to use any other user you need to do it for the users specific “.bashrc” file or you need to set the environment variables globally for the all the users of the operating system.
Add below content to the end of the file “.bashrc”
Save and exit the file “.bashrc”
We either need to log out and log in again to make the changes took effect, or you can restart the .bashrc file by using the command below.
Tomcat is now installed and configured on your machine / server but it is not yet started.
To start Apache Tomcat 7 web server use commands below:
Now we go to the web browser and navigate to you rip address; in our case it is “192.168.10.20” our URL is below:
Why port 8080?
Apache Tomcat 7 web server’s default port is 8080. However you may change this to something else which is not the scope of this article.
This will show us the default page of the Apache Tomcat 7. If you see the default page it will be saying “If you see this page this means that you have successfully installed Apache Tomcat 7”
Great, You just installed and configured Apache Tomcat 7 Web server!
In next article we will cover how to deploy web applications under Apache Tomcat 7 web server. | <urn:uuid:06c1c20f-3f77-4b18-8255-44db16a1f3be> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.codero.com/knowledge-base/content/14/306/en/how-to-setup-apache-tomcat.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501169776.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104609-00372-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.841024 | 982 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Black Box Explains Testing and Certifying Fiber
If you’re accustomed to certifying copper cable, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to certify fiber optic cable because it’s immune to electrical interference. You only need to check a few measurements.
Attenuation (or decibel loss)—Measured in decibels/kilometer (dB/km), this is the decrease of signal strength as it travels through the fiber cable. Generally, attenuation problems are more common on multimode fiber optic cables.
Return loss—This is the amount of light reflected from the far end of the cable back to the source. The lower the number, the better. For example, a reading of -60 decibels is better than -20 decibels. Like attenuation, return loss is usually greater with multimode cable.
Graded refractive index—This measures how the light is sent down the fiber. This is commonly measured at wavelengths of 850 and 1300 nanometers. Compared to other operating frequencies, these two ranges yield the lowest intrinsic power loss. (NOTE: This is valid for multimode fiber only.)
Propagation delay—This is the time it takes a signal to travel from one point to another over a transmission channel.
Optical time-domain reflectometry (OTDR)—This enables you to isolate cable faults by transmitting high-frequency pulses onto a cable and examining their reflections along the cable. With OTDR, you can also determine the length of a fiber optic cable because the OTDR value includes the distance the optic signal travels.
There are many fiber optic testers on the market today. Basic fiber optic testers function by shining a light down one end of the cable. At the other end, there’s a receiver calibrated to the strength of the light source. With this test, you can measure how much light is going to the other end of the cable. Generally these testers give you the results in dB lost, which you then compare to the loss budget. If the measured loss is less than the number calculated by your loss budget, your installation is good.
Newer fiber optic testers have a broader range of capabilities. They can test both 850- and 1300-nanometer signals at the same time and can check your cable for compliance with specific standards. | <urn:uuid:1a89c6ed-0ad3-44f2-afc6-7fc66f1d4f5f> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.blackbox.com/en-au/products/black-box-explains/testing-and-certifying-fiber | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170864.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00072-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90929 | 474 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Common Core State Standards offer educators, parents and administrators a consistent and clear understanding of what students need to learn in order to be successful in the classroom, college and beyond. Technology is a critical component of Common Core that can support teaching, learning and student engagement and assessment.
CDW-G’s latest research, Common Core Tech Report, surveyed 300 IT professionals in public schools around the country to understand how well prepared they are to meet the technology requirements of Common Core, how districts are prioritizing Common Core and the technology challenges they face.
Common Core/Common Good
- More than three-fourths of IT professionals expect Common Core to have a positive impact on their district
- Strong infrastructure is a must to ensure teachers can move forward confidently, so update and upgrade before bringing in new technology
- Change is hard. Develop and communicate a strong vision to all stakeholders to ensure everyone is speaking the same language
- It’s not about a device, which should be transparent, it’s about the instructional shift that makes students active participants in learning so that they take over ownership of their education
- In a year, your program will look very different. Continue to use pilot groups/leaders to share best practices and borrow ideas that unify your vision
CDW-G surveyed 300 IT professionals from K-12 public school districts in May 2013. The survey excluded Alaska, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas and Virginia, which had not adopted Common Core State Standards as of May 2013. The total sample size equates to a margin of error of ±3.0 percent at a 95 percent confidence level.Tweet | <urn:uuid:3725dd2e-ebcd-4287-b00f-904cf68a03cc> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.cdwnewsroom.com/cdw-g-common-core-tech/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171416.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00424-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933245 | 328 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Docker is an open source framework that provides a lighter-weight type of virtualization, using Linux containers rather than virtual machines. Built on traditional Linux distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu, Docker lets you package applications and services as images that run in their own portable containers and can move between physical, virtual, and cloud foundations without requiring any modification. If you build a Docker image on an Ubuntu laptop or physical server, you can run it on any compatible Linux, anywhere.
In this way, Docker allows for a very high degree of application portability and agility, and it lends itself to highly scalable applications. However, the nature of Docker also leans toward running a single service or application per container, rather than a collection of processes, such as a LAMP stack. That is possible, but we will detail here the most common use, which is for a single process or service.
[ First look: Docker 1.0 is ready for prime time | Prove your expertise with the free OS in InfoWorld's Linux admin IQ test round 1 and round 2. | Subscribe to InfoWorld's Data Center newsletter to stay on top of the latest developments. ]
To continue reading this article register now | <urn:uuid:0de22d33-a3d1-4673-8298-0f7e78e3bad5> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.computerworld.com/article/2491451/app-development/how-to--get-started-with-docker.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171706.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00600-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911168 | 244 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Building Intelligence into Machine Learning Hardware
December 5, 2016 Ben Cotton
Machine learning is a rising star in the compute constellation, and for good reason. It has the ability to not only make life more convenient – think email spam filtering, shopping recommendations, and the like – but also to save lives by powering the intelligence behind autonomous vehicles, heart attack prediction, etc. While the applications of machine learning are bounded only by imagination, the execution of those applications is bounded by the available compute resources. Machine learning is compute-intensive and it turns out that traditional compute hardware is not well-suited for the task.
Many machine learning shops have approached the problem with graphics processing units (GPUs), application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) – for example, Google TensorFlow – or field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) – for example, Microsoft’s investment in FPGAs for Azure and Amazon’s announcement of FPGA instances. Graphcore says these don’t provide the necessary performance boosts and suggests a different approach. The company is developing a new kind of hardware purpose-built for machine learning.
In a presentation to the Hadoop Users Group UK in October, Graphcore CTO Simon Knowles explained why current offerings fall short. ASICs represent a fixed point in time – once the chip is programmed, it keeps that programming forever. The field of machine learning is relatively young and is still evolving rapidly, so committing to a particular model or algorithm up front means missing out on improvements for the life of the hardware. FPGAs can be updated, but still have to be reprogrammed. GPUs are designed for high-performance, high-precision workloads and machine learning tends to be high-performance, low-precision.
CPUs and GPUs are excellent at deterministic computing – when a given input yields a single, predictable output – but they fall short in probabilistic computing. What we know as “judgment” is probabilistic computing where approximate answers come from missing data, or a lack of time or energy.
Graphcore is betting that hardware purpose-built for machine learning is the way to go. By designing a new class of processor – what they call the Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU) – machine learning workloads can get better performance and efficiency. Instead of focusing on scalars (CPUs) or vectors (GPUs), the IPU is specifically designed for processing graphs. Graphs in machine learning are very sparse, with each vertex connected to few other vertices. They estimate the IPU provides a 5x performance improvement for general machine learning workloads and 50-100x for some applications like autonomous vehicles. As a comparison, GPU performance for machine learning, according to Knowles, increases at a rate of 1.3-1.4x every two years.
Graphcore’s focus is on improving the speed and efficiency of the probabilistic computation needed for machines to exhibit what might be called intelligence. Knowles described intelligence as the culmination of four parts. First, condensing experience (data) into a probability model. Second, summarizing that model. Third, predicting the likely outputs given a set of inputs. Lastly, inferring the likely inputs given an output. With the IPU, Graphcore hopes to be on the cutting edge. “Intelligence is the future of all computing,” Knowles told the group, “It’s hard to imagine a computing task that cannot be improved by [intelligence].”
Yet we don’t use the word “betting” lightly above. Graphcore exited stealth mode at the end of October with the announcement of a $30 million funding round lead by Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH and Samsung Catalyst Fund. While the IPU technology sounds promising, it will not go to market until sometime in 2017 and so has not yet established itself in real-world deployments. It remains to be seen whether the industry will accept a new processor paradigm. As Michael Feldman noted on episode 148 of “This Week in HPC”, the trend has been away from HPC-specific silicon and toward commodity processors.
However, Intel’s purchase of Nervana Systems and Google’s development of the Tensor Processing Unit suggest that major tech companies are willing to look at purpose-built chips for their deep learning efforts. If Graphcore can deliver on their stated performance, the lower power and space profile of the IPU may be enough to drive adoption – particularly in power and space constrained environments like automobiles. | <urn:uuid:f5aeeb8f-b1f8-40a8-9454-3300fd1082e1> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.nextplatform.com/2016/12/05/building-intelligence-machine-learning-hardware/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171706.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00600-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926336 | 940 | 2.75 | 3 |
Microsoft Visio allows you to bring drawings into several applications (for example, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint). Unfortunately, the default method is to insert the whole "Visio object" into a file. This can cause problems.
When you copy and paste a Visio drawing into another application, the Visio object includes all the application data with the drawing. This object information is needed if you want to be able to double-click the drawing from Word or PowerPoint and have it open in Visio for editing. But pasting as an object adds many megabytes to the size of your file. With only a few such drawings, a Word document can bloat from 300 KB to 12 MB, making it troublesome to share among authors or reviewers, and a trial for partners or customers to download.
Bringing a Visio Drawing into a Document
Unless you really need the live editing capability, avoid unnecessary file bloating by performing the following steps when you paste:
Step 1 In Visio, copy the drawing as you normally do. Tip: Ctrl-C copies the whole drawing.
Step 2 At the desired location in the destination document, choose Edit > Paste Special. In the Paste Special dialog box, choose Picture (Windows Metafile).
Step 3 Click OK. The drawing is inserted as an ordinary picture. If it is not positioned properly, choose Format > Picture, click the Layout tab and select In line with text.
The Bottom Line
Do not use the paste default (Edit > Paste or Ctrl-V) to paste Visio drawings. Always use Paste Special.
Downsizing Existing Drawings
If a document is larger than it should be, you can check to see if the Visio drawings are the reason and, if so, fix the problem.
Step 1 With the drawing selected in the Word or PowerPoint document, choose Edit. At the bottom of the Edit menu, you will see one of the following:
•Edit Object, if the drawing was inserted by simple pasting. It is a Visio object and taking up much more file space than it needs to. Go on to Step 2.
•Edit Picture, if the drawing was inserted properly, as a picture. It is not the source of the large file size.
Step 2 If the drawing is an object, cut it (Ctrl-X), and then repaste as in Bringing a Visio Drawing into a Document.
Tip You can easily click through the document to check each picture by using the Go To feature in Microsoft Word. Where you want to start searching, press Ctrl-G. In the Go To What list, select Graphic and click Next. You go to the next graphic. Click it to select and then check as in Step 1. If needed, repaste as in Step 2. Click Next and continue these steps for other graphics. | <urn:uuid:c3c4265a-a181-41a2-9393-081eecc19878> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.cisco.com/cisco/web/docs/iam/unified/ipcc601/How_to_Use_Microsoft_Visio_Drawings_Efficiently.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501172017.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104612-00124-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.877781 | 579 | 2.5625 | 3 |
i can`t understanding these configurations
1- if we are using ip address 126.96.36.199 under tunnel interface , then why we need tunnel source s0/0 configuration?
by default source ip address of the packet go threw must be source 188.8.131.52 address , so why we need to change this address by using tunnel source command?
2- if new packet is created into the original ip packet before it sent out of the tunnel interface , then it`s P2P interface , why we need Destinatio0n ip address command?
3- ccna certification book told us that tunnel interfaces must be into same ip address range, then why we need this if these two logical interfaces are P2P interfaces like serial
if anyone have good link about GRE that explaining these commands , please share it | <urn:uuid:3c5f686b-9a11-433f-9285-fc1dc8a93d0e> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://forum.internetworkexpert.com/forums/p/35199/335296.aspx | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501173405.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104613-00300-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.864604 | 172 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Dean Rusk, President Kennedy's Secretary of State, was quoted as saying during the last stages of the Cuban missile crisis, "We were eyeball to eyeball and the other side blinked first." This kind of international game of "chicken" is played out in various contexts as countries or international organizations use their leverage to get what they want from other countries. The possibility that the transfer of data across international borders -- particularly the flow of such data from member countries of the European Union to the United States -- is currently caught up in a policy impasse that threatens to turn into an episode where the winner will be determined by who can remain steely-eyed as the stakes are raised, or who will bail out with a figurative blink of the eyes.
The European Union has finalized its directive on data protection, which will go into effect within the next few years. Data protection is serious business in Europe and Europeans think of the protection of personal information as a basic human right. Most member countries have data protection laws already, and all members must have them in place shortly.
In Europe data protection means the protection of personally identifying information from unauthorized disclosure. It is frequently tied to electronic records and is generally based on a scheme of registering personal information databases with a central authority. The laws apply to both public and private databases. Data transfers can be made only for sanctioned purposes, such as uses that are consistent with the purpose for which the information was collected.
Data protection commissioners or registrars are authorized to take action against database holders who use personal information improperly. Under the EU data protection directive, transfers of personal information may occur only if the recipient of the information has adequate measures in place to protect the confidentiality of the information while in the recipient's hands.
And there is the rub. No place in North America, with the exception of the province of Quebec, has a law that adequately protects personal information held by the private sector. While the United States and Canada have federal Privacy Acts, both statutes only protect personal information in the hands of the federal government. Several Canadian provinces -- Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta -- have privacy protections at the provincial and municipal level, while Quebec has provincial, municipal and private sector protections. There are some privacy laws in the states, but none offer any particular protections outside the realm of government records.
THE U.S. APPROACH
Over the years the United States has taken a sectoral approach, providing privacy protections for particular industries. As a result, the United States has a Fair Credit Reporting Act, which was amended substantially in the last Congress; a Right to Financial Privacy Act; the Electronic Communications Privacy Act; and the somewhat insubstantial Video Privacy Protection Act.
The United States has yet to legislate privacy protections for medical records, although the Medical Records Confidentiality Act was considered by the last Congress and prospects seem good that some form of medical privacy will be passed in the next few years. As a first step, the Kennedy-Kassebaum Act, concerning portability of medical insurance coverage, contained language directing the Department of Health and Human Services to come up with a medical privacy scheme that Congress could then consider.
Industry groups could adopt tougher protections, but could not offer less than the CSA code. Probably the federal privacy commissioner and the various provincial commissioners would be charged with monitoring performance and helping to hold industry accountable to the code. Judicial remedies are also likely to be available.
The United States is moving much more cautiously, but there are some developments that could help it pull itself up. While Canadian Justice Minister Allan Rock was telling the International Conference of Data Commissioners at their meeting last September in Ottawa that Canada would have legislation in place by the year 2000, Sally Katzen, head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget told the same group that the sectoral approach was the position of choice for the United States. One American attendee at the conference said Katzen's speech sounded like one he had heard four years earlier during the Bush administration.
However, there is an American initiative coming out of the Federal Trade Commission. Commissioner Christine Varney, something of a protege of President Clinton, has supported the idea that the FTC could use its statutory authority to police unfair business practices as both a carrot and a club in convincing business to provide adequate privacy protections. While this is a much lower level response than Canada's, it holds some promise for accomplishing some of the same goals. However, such privacy initiatives in the United States are very personality-driven and the FTC's interest might evaporate if Varney were to leave.
On the negative side of U.S. developments, the continuing suggestion that the United States create some kind of independent privacy commission that might act as an ombudsman and honest broker in dealing with privacy protection in both the public and private sector, has yet to garner any enthusiasm, although it is an idea that is favorably received by European data commissioners as the first sign that the United State is really serious about this issue.
Several months ago Michie published what is certainly the current bible for Americans trying to understand these issues. Data Privacy Law, by law professors Paul Schwartz and Joel Reidenberg is the most thorough and comprehensive examination of all aspects of data protection. Schwartz and Reidenberg were commissioned to write a study of American privacy protections so that the European Union would have a better idea of the state of affairs in the United States. What they have produced, however, is perhaps more relevant to Americans who need to understand this issue. Another recommended source for Americans in search of European developments and perspectives is the excellent British newsletter Privacy Laws & Business, published and edited by Stewart Dresner.
As the Internet continues to break down any distinctions about the flow of information across international borders, the economic, intellectual, and public policy lifelines will depend on the continuation of such international data flows. For the United States to ignore or underestimate the importance of a meeting of the minds on the subject of international data protection could have catastrophic results down the road. But as with many international imbroglios, the results will depend in part on which side blinks first.
Harry Hammitt is editor/publisher of Access Reports, a newsletter published in Lynchburg, Va., covering open government laws and information policy issues. E-mail: <firstname.lastname@example.org>. | <urn:uuid:5fe89963-79d2-4dd6-91b1-b9b303b2459f> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.govtech.com/magazines/gt/100554539.html?page=2 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170249.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00068-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960448 | 1,295 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Students will enter a job market that requires skills far different that those of today. Learn how schools are taking new approaches to develop critical thinking with 3D printing for future careers. Witness the connection of teacher instruction and student achievement with Jeff Rosen, Program Director for Technology and Robotics at Georgia Institute of Technology. Jeff outlines AMP (Advanced Manufacturing and Prototyping Integrated to Unlock Potential), a National Science Foundation project which includes designed courses, mini challenges and interdisciplinary course experience for grades 6 – 8. Explore the uses of 3D printers for the classroom, and get an introduction to the Stratasys uPrint 3D Printer which offers educators reliability and repeatable results for streamlined learning.
Learn how Jocelyn Kolb-Dewitt and Darlene Farris-LaBar, co-directors of the G3D Stratasys Super Lab at East Stroudsburg University, inspire and empower students in art and design with 3D printing. Darlene Farris-Labar designs and 3D prints plants and flowers to reimagine an ecosystem on the brink of extinction. Explore product design with Jocelyn Kolb, who 15 years ago implemented 3D printing into her art and teaching. Analyze and understand how young minds interface software and hands-on learning for increased retention. Assess the impact of real-world projects including robotic prosthetics, DICOM scans, clothing design, biological models and artistic representations of microscopic life forms.
Frank J. Rybicki, MD, PhD : University of Ottawa/Ottawa Hospital & Michael Gaisford - Stratasys Medical Solutions
Dr. Rybicki is Professor and Chair of Radiology at the University of Ottawa and Chief of Medical Imaging at The Ottawa Hospital. In this webinar, you’ll examine the role of 3D printing in medicine and hospitals. Learn about use cases and different models for hospital-based 3D printing including facial transplants, surgical guides, radiology and standard research tools. Dr. Rybicki illuminates current trends and future direction in 3D printing while addressing parallel topics such as costs, education, printer selection and achieving objectives.
Steve Chomyszak, Assistant Professor at Wentworth Institute of Technology
Watch this webinar for an overview of a 14-week project-based 3D printing curriculum developed for technical educators, including:
• How an interactive learning environment impacted and inspired Wentworth Institute of Technology (WIT) students
• How the WIT 3D printing lab went from crickets to buzzing with activity
• How the curriculum measured up according to students
• Lessons learned and best practices for teaching the course
• Faculty impression of the course and future plans
Ryan Erickson, Maker Space Coord., Cedar Park Elementary, Apple Valley, MN. & Gina Scala, Dir. of Edu. Marketing, Stratasys
Learn how to implement 3D printing to increase student engagement across K-12 curriculum. Presenter Ryan Erickson, a Minnesota Maker Space coordinator, outlines 3D printing lessons applicable to daily student life. The webinar focuses on one simple question, “How do we apply 3D printing to K-12 education?” The process doesn’t start with expensive machines and complex software applications. Students are introduced to the technology from the bottom up. Simple IOS apps such as MakerBot PrintShop, scan student drawings for immediate upload to CAD for 3D printing. Applying 3D printing to classrooms goes beyond engineering in STEM learning – it redefines creativity entirely. Students can model historical monuments into tangible figures to understand sentiment and context; model sonic waves into visible artifacts; build geometric figures to understand volume and surface area, and map proteins and atoms into connectable models. 3D printing engages students to think creatively, it allows them to craft and build with imagination. For teachers, this technology maximizes the opportunity for impactful learning environments.
Sand casting is the process of metal casting using sand as the mold material. The resulting mold cavity is used to create finished metal parts. The production of sand molds and cast metal parts is relatively straightforward and suitable for automated methods. However, fabrication of the patterns used to produce the sand molds (typically CNC machining) is often difficult, time-consuming and expensive.
Uri Masch, Stratasys PolyJet Applications Engineer
Prototyping and low-volume production of LSR parts are typically handled with manual casting methods, using molds made of metal, RTV or modeling board. However, these kinds of molds can be time and labor intensive to produce and pose limitations on the complexity of the mold.
Alissa Wild, Sr. Business Development Manager at Stratasys
Dig into the details and identify applications on your manufacturing floor for 3D printed jigs and fixtures. In this webinar you'll see many use cases of companies saving time and money while creating efficiency on their production floors with custom jigs and fixtures.
Todd Grimm, Technology Consultant and Industry Thought Leader
Learn how to access the potential ROI of 3D printing and justify the cost of a machine with profit gains from 3D printing manufacturing aids. Increasing the number of manufacturing tools like jigs, fixtures, organizational aids, improves efficiency, capacity, unit cost and responsiveness. Using additive manufacturing (3D printing) to produce these tools makes them more accessible and quicker to implement.
Manufacturing relies on aids and tools, including jigs, fixtures, templates and gauges to maintain quality and production efficiency. By using FDM 3D Printing technology to produce jigs and fixtures, the traditional fabrication process is substantially simplified; tool-making becomes less expensive and time consuming. As a result, manufacturers realize immediate improvements in productivity, efficiency and quality.
A robot’s end of arm tool (EOAT) is selected based on the operation it will perform and is specific to the part or tool that it manipulates. Robot users often need customized solutions to engage uniquely shaped objects but this is typically a costly and time-consuming approach.
In this webinar you’ll see how FDM technology offers a number of benefits over traditional methods of making EOATs.
Learn how 3D printing with FDM Technology makes the production of composite tooling faster, more agile and less costly. Listen as Tim Schniepp, Stratasys business development director for composite tooling, explains the benefits and capabilities of FDM composite tooling, including examples of customers who successfully use this application.
Learn more as Dr. Scott Rader, Stratasys, and Dr. Vicknes Waran, Centre for Biomedical and Technology Integration (CBMTI) in Malaysia, discuss how 3D printing can reduce cost, improve care or increase speed at every step in the medical device value chain. This results in increased profitability, technology adoption and market responsiveness. Stratasys solutions shape clinical outcomes and corporate profit.
Every day, our customers find simpler, smarter approaches to stubborn design problems – and greater confidence to confront towering human and technological challenges. Less hindered by the usual constraints with 3D printing, they can imagine, design, iterate and replicate more freely than ever before. By providing the shortest possible path from idea to solid object, Stratasys empowers them to untangle complexity, tackle tough problems, uncover new solutions – and to do it all with the urgency our accelerating world demands.
We’ve been at the forefront of 3D printing innovation for more than 25 years. We’re shaping lives by helping researchers and health experts expand human knowledge and advance health care delivery. We are fueling the next generation of innovation through our work in aerospace, automotive and education. We’re trusted worldwide by leading manufacturers and groundbreaking designers, makers, thinkers and doers. As a proud innovation partner, we offer the best mix of technologies, deep industry expertise -- and the most flexible implementation options to meet our customers’ needs – whatever shape they may take.
Integrating 3D Printing into the Product Development ProcessJay Beversdorf, Applications Engineer, Stratasys & Tony den Hoed, Lead Engineer, Rotating Pipelayer Team, Volvo Construction[[ webcastStartDate * 1000 | amDateFormat: 'MMM D YYYY h:mm a' ]]61 mins | <urn:uuid:64ed373d-158b-4a2a-8731-d04bfcdcd8d6> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/14481/228749 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170875.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00420-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901433 | 1,690 | 3.265625 | 3 |
As federal and state regulations on the water quality of our lakes and rivers become stricter, agencies responsible for water quality must find ways to fund meeting the new requirements. While National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) requirements for managing storm water pollution are still being phased in, some states are trying to impose even more stringent regulations.
To cover the costs associated with the NPDES -- which requires that municipalities implement management practices to mitigate pollution in urban runoff -- many cities started billing residents based on the amount of impervious surface area on their property, which affects their contribution to runoff since water can't soak into the ground.
The city and county of Denver is way ahead of the game.
Denver is hit with intense rainstorms in the summer, causing surges in runoff into the storm water system, said Jeff Blossom, GIS photogrammetry administrator for the Denver Wastewater Management Division (WMD). He said ongoing construction and maintenance of the storm water system are required to prevent flooding and protect public health.
In 1980, Denver passed an ordinance allowing the WMD to bill residents to cover the costs of building and maintaining infrastructure that controls the flow of rain and melting snow, which is disrupted when land is developed.
Though storm water billing brings in needed funds, Blossom said billing by impervious surfaces is often laborious.
"If you're going to map every property down to every 10 square feet -- every sidewalk, every patio, etc. -- you have to have detailed mapping, and that takes quite a few people," he said. "But that's what they committed to in 1980, and that's what we've been committed to since."
Recently the WMD worked with DigitalGlobe on a pilot that Blossom estimates would help the division generate four times the revenue per hour. The DigitalGlobe technology used multispectral satellite data -- red, blue, green and near infrared -- to map impervious surface areas in five Denver neighborhoods. The red, green and blue combine to form an image visible to human eyes, said Blossom.
"The near infrared measures the vegetative content -- or lack of it -- and it's highly sensitive, so it can discriminate between a gravel parking lot versus an asphalt parking lot," he explained.
The technology distinguishes impervious surfaces with 95 percent accuracy, according to Jeff Liedtke, DigitalGlobe's director of Civil Government Applications. He said there are two components to mapping the impervious surfaces, one of which is using the satellite imagery.
"The other is running it through an algorithm that classifies the image into impervious and pervious areas, and using our proprietary algorithm and special techniques to refine that," he said.
Liedtke said the Denver pilot helped DigitalGlobe assess the product's usefulness in a real-life setting.
"We had of lot of ideas on how this technology could be used, but we needed to deploy it in a real-life situation," he said. "We were very interested in assessing both the utility of the information, the accuracy of the information and how it would be used in day-to-day operations."
Denver's WMD will continue purchasing aerial photography -- which according to Blossom, costs $150,000 to $200,000 -- every two years because of its higher resolution, but Blossom said he hopes to purchase the satellite data in the interim years so the WMD has current data at least every year.
The WMD currently has aerial photos taken of the city/county of Denver biennially and digitizes them to map impervious surfaces for billing.
"That's mostly due to budget purposes since it's pretty expensive to acquire aerial photos for the whole city," Blossom said.
The aerial photos are taken when obstructions are least likely, but trees and other impediments block the camera's view of some properties. To account for obstructions and changes that may occur between aerial photo shoots, Blossom said the WMD systematically selects and investigates properties to verify the imagery's correctness.
"Anytime houses are built and then occupied, we map those properties," he said. "Anytime a parcel is split or two parcels are combined, we remap the impervious to verify that we have the correct amounts. Anytime property is bought or sold in the city, we do an inspection to make sure the storm bill is correct for the seller going to the buyer. Anytime customers call in and want to verify their bill, we map those."
Additionally the WMD conducts routine investigations where there has been a 40 percent to 50 percent change from previously collected imagery, Blossom said. On their computers, investigators search the overlaid images of their assigned areas and find changed properties by eye.
"That's a time-consuming process," Blossom said.
Using DigitalGlobe's satellite imagery and algorithm, properties can be flagged automatically.
"It's not up to the human eye to detect it and estimate 40 to 50 percent," Blossom said. "You can get exact numbers. I can identify all properties that have a 50 percent difference, all properties that have a 29.5 percent difference or whatever I specify in the queries I want to run."
Blossom said having more current data will also help the WMD give better customer service by providing a more accurate bill.
"A lot of people are being billed, and they've made changes to their land and their bill is incorrect," he said.
DigitalGlobe's Liedtke noted that more revenue could be realized by obtaining data more often than every two years. "There's a lot of growth in two years, and that's unrecognized revenue for the city and county of Denver if they don't assess those fees," he said.
Currently investigators are often delayed in getting to new construction sites. "It might be months before we get around to mapping those properties and adding them into our billing database," said Blossom. Streamlining the process could help the city keep up with Denver's rapid growth.
"The time-savings amounts to a more productive environment and a higher rate of revenue generation for wastewater," he said.
Blossom said engineers who plan storm water infrastructure could also gain from the maps. "Having a complete impervious map for the entire city gives them a great data set, and they can really refine and improve their models so they can be much more accurate," said Blossom. "Then they will know exactly what pipe size they need instead of an estimate now."
The impervious surface product, which Liedtke said would go for a standard price of $300 per square mile, has not yet been sold to any jurisdiction, but he said the NPDES -- a permitting process that regulates water pollution and is overseen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency -- will drive demand for the technology.
"It's an unfunded mandate," Liedtke said. "So one way of generating the funds to comply with this mandate is to develop user fees."
NPDES regulations, which came out of the Clean Water Act, are being implemented in two phases. Phase I, which is already complete, required municipalities with populations of more than 100,000 to implement best management practices to minimize storm water pollution. Phase II, which started in 2003, requires the remaining municipalities -- with a few exceptions -- to implement the same practices.
Wheat Ridge, Colo., which is considering implementing a storm water billing utility, may be the first to purchase DigitalGlobe's technology for mapping impervious surfaces. Many Colorado communities are facing Phase II requirements, according to Jon Reynolds, project supervisor in Wheat Ridge.
"Almost one or two dozen in this Colorado area are in that population range, so we're just one of many," he said, adding that many nearby towns already implemented storm water billing programs. "Many smaller municipalities decided the only way to pay for this program is to implement a storm water billing utility. This was justifiable in that the municipalities are providing a storm water utility service."
"They're not inexpensive measures," said Alexandra Dunn, general counsel for the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies, noting that some management practices could include street sweeping, installing catch basins on drainage outfalls so rubbish doesn't flow to water bodies and marking drains so the public knows where the drains lead. "There are a number of technology and management practices that cities can put in place to mitigate the impact of storm water on water quality."
In some places, Dunn said, storm water costs could worsen. "Some states can really be more stringent than the federal government and the federal law," she said.
Though controversial, Dunn said some states were trying to place water quality requirements on storm water discharges that would make cities treat storm water -- something many consider too costly to realistically implement at this point. She said several jurisdictions have filed lawsuits to mitigate the requirements.
"It's not a done deal," she said. "This is the battlefield right now for cities." | <urn:uuid:2489bef1-5eb2-4aa6-a11d-65de884466d3> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.govtech.com/magazines/gt/Gently-Down-the-Stream.html?page=3 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171078.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00596-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963526 | 1,828 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Although the tech world fetishises heavy app usage, there’s a point where digital users become digital addicts. The choices of app designers and developers affect the wellbeing of individuals and shape society.
Developers can give app users what they seem to want – material for binge consumption. Demand, after all, is how tobacco companies justify their business.
Or, they can design apps that protect users from abuse and addiction – and doing the right thing is easier than they may think.
Digital and media addiction is not new – it existed before the smartphone, but the smartphone has made it a global illness.
Across decades of academic research, researchers have grappled with media addictions and there is a pretty clear consensus: people can abuse technology, and doing so has serious consequences.
The conversation about digital addiction changes as technology advances. Can people be addicted to TV, or do they just lack self-control (1992)? Do internet addicts become depressed and lonely from abusing the web, or do they abuse the web because they’re lonely and depressed (2003)?
If the average user spends 160 minutes per day on a smartphone, and 30% of that time goes towards WhatsApp and Facebook, does that mean users have a rich social life (2016)? Or, do they have an addiction that makes them chronically distracted, unproductive and emotionally stunted?
Mobile technology is particularly hard to study because it has seeped into every activity and every waking hour of life. The new normal camouflages destructive behaviors.
For instance, the average smartphone user checked his or her device 150 times per day in 2013. Millennials, on average, spend 18 hours per day with different types of media. Are those signs of illnesses, or is that modern life?
Two studies in particular should inform how we distinguish abuse from healthy norms. The first is a 2015 study lead by Sang Pil Han, professor of information systems at Arizona State University. “In terms of addictiveness,” he said, “[mobile social apps] more considerably foster dependency than do cocaine and alcohol, but are less addictive than caffeine and cigarettes.”
Han’s team reached this conclusion examining the use of Facebook and Anipang, a popular Korean mobile game, among smartphone owners in Korea.
The second study is a literature review (i.e. study of studies) conducted by Sree Jadapalle, MD. Based on 13 MRI studies, she found that individuals diagnosed with an internet addiction disorder (IAD) show reduced levels of dopamine transporters.
Much like drug addicts, internet addicts build up a tolerance to their media of choice. The user needs more and more of the same digital experience to feel the same dopamine high. In essence, digital abuse can mess with our brain chemistry and create abnormalities.
Regardless of what we see as commonplace or normal, it’s pretty clear that apps can be as addictive as hard drugs, and that internet addictions cause visible, physical damage to our brains.
Uncapped use apps
Mobile devices and apps are the ultimate dopamine duo. They are with us constantly, and masterfully hijack our attention.
‘Uncapped use apps’ distinguish addictive apps from the rest? There is no fundamental constraint on usage – the main goal is the use itself, and the dopamine reward it provides.
These apps are designed for constant, limitless use because binging is lucrative for the developer. Heavy users generate more ad revenue and make more in-app purchases. Attracting them is the primary design goal.
Most apps, on the other hand, are ‘capped’ in use. They have an inherent goal or feature, the need for which is finite. Meditating or checking your to-do list are capped activities. While the app may encourage more of those behaviors, addiction is highly unlikely.
Uncapped use apps are not inherently evil. Rather, like alcohol or junk food, they need to be treated as any product that can be used in a safe or compulsive manner.
Thanks to nutritional facts, people know how many calories are in a bag of potato chips. But mobile users have no idea how much time they really spend in apps, and that is concerning.
Users deserve digital ‘nutritional’ facts. Knowing that the line between heavy use and abuse is vague, developers of social, gaming or other uncapped use apps can design two features to protect people.
First, identify users who rank in the top 20% for daily log-ins and time spent using the app. Email or text them a weekly report that reveals how frequently they logged in and how much total time they spend interacting with the app. In settings or account information, add a ‘usage’ section where all users can see this information.
Second, design self-regulation tools and add them to your app’s usage section. One tool could limit daily log-ins (or entry to the app) to a quantity set by the user. Another could limit daily time in the application. This will empower people to use these apps responsibly.
In the religion of the global tech community, these suggestions are heretical. Investors, journalists and other developers will only praise you for building an app that accrues millions of users who get lost in your app for hours per day.
No one will celebrate you for protecting users against mindless, destructive binging – not yet, anyway.
Tap into your moral courage. Design responsible disclosure and self-regulation tools into your app not because it’s mandated, but because it is the right thing to do.
Sourced from Felice Miller Gabriel, co-founder, Delvv | <urn:uuid:65cb38ca-1515-4c4b-a2b0-337cfbfb6e93> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.information-age.com/why-mobile-apps-are-becoming-destructive-additions-123461677/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501172018.95/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104612-00472-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937177 | 1,161 | 3 | 3 |
A recent Intel study shows that the compute load that required 184 single-core processors in 2005 now can be handled with just 21 processors, where every nine servers gets replaced by one.
For 40 years, technology rode Moore's Law to yield ever-more-powerful processors at lower cost. Its compounding effect was astounding: One of the best analogies is that we now have more processing power in a smartphone than the Apollo astronauts had when they landed on the moon. At the same time, though, the electrical power requirements for those processors continued to increase at a similar rate as the increase in transistor count. While new technologies (CMOS, for example) provided a one-time step-down in power requirements, each turn-up in processor frequency and density resulted in similar power increases.
As a result, by the 2000-2005 timeframe, the industry grew concerned about the amount of power and cooling required for each rack in the data center. And with the enormous increase in servers spurred by Internet commerce, most IT shops have labored for the past decade to supply adequate data center power and cooling.
In the meantime, most IT shops have experienced compute and storage growth rates of 20% to 50% a year, requiring either additional data centers or major increases in power and cooling capacity at existing centers. Since 2008, there has been some alleviation due to both slower business growth and the benefits of virtualization, which has let companies reduce their number of servers by as much as 10 to 1 for 30% to 70% of their footprint. But IT shops can deploy virtualization only once, suggesting that they'll be staring at a data center build or major upgrade in the next few years.
But an interesting thing has happened to server power efficiency. Before 2006, such efficiency improvements were nominal, represented by the solid blue line below. Even if your data center kept the number of servers steady but just migrated to the latest model, it would need significant increases in power and cooling. You'd experience greater compute performance, of course, but your power and cooling would increase in a corresponding fashion. Since 2006, however, compute efficiency (green line) has improved dramatically, even outpacing the improvement in processor performance (red lines).
The chart above shows how the compute efficiency (performance per watt -- green line) has shifted dramatically from its historical trend (blue line). And it's improving about as fast as compute performance is improving (red lines), perhaps even faster. The chart above is for the HP DL 380 server line over the past decade, but most servers are showing a similar shift. | <urn:uuid:44ccb1dd-33f3-462e-abbf-9b6da65ff04b> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.networkcomputing.com/data-centers/why-your-data-center-costs-will-drop/1999638256 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501173761.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104613-00648-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958016 | 521 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Developing High-Demand Skills: Virtualization
“Virtualization” is one of those trendy terms these days, much like “green IT” or “cloud computing.” What exactly does it mean, though? To put it simply, virtualization is a description of how a service can be logically separated from the physical hardware that is traditionally used to provide it.
For instance, a local area network (LAN) traditionally was provided by one or more switches. Segmenting the network into multiple networks meant buying separate switches for each subnet. Today, multiple networks can be logically segmented across one or more switches by use of virtual LANs (VLANs).
The logical separation of service from hardware is not limited to networking. Virtualization tends to fall into one of four major categories:
- Virtual LANs (VLANs): As previously discussed, this refers to one or more switches that act as multiple networks.
- Platform virtualization: This uses a hypervisor to abstract operating system(s) from physical hardware, allowing multiple virtual systems to run on a single piece of hardware. Platform virtualization is a major trend in IT that often is discussed in the context of environmental friendliness since it reduces electrical usage and the amount of servers needed. It’s also a major money saver: An average server costs as much as the amount of electricity it uses during a three-year period, and platform virtualization can reduce the number of servers needed by as much as 40-to-1. That is a huge payback.
- Application virtualization: A virtual application is an encapsulated portable application that does not truly get installed.
- Storage virtualization: This provides access to storage while making the location of the physical disk irrelevant. Examples are deduplication, which provides access to more storage than physically exists, and appliances that aggregate multiple storage sources into a single service.
Now let’s delve specifically into the platform virtualization world. There are a healthy number of vendors that provide platform virtualization solutions. The leaders of the pack are Citrix, Microsoft and VMware. Each of these vendors has a certification track, as well.
XenServer is Citrix’s open source virtualization platform. Certification for XenServer is available in each of its four versions: CCA for Citrix XenServer 4 Platinum Edition; CCA for Citrix XenServer 5 Platinum Edition; CCA for Citrix XenServer Enterprise Edition 4; and CCA for Citrix XenServer Enterprise Edition 5.
Although each XenServer certification requires passing only one test, published resources are sparse. Syngress is one of the few publishers that covers it. The Definitive Guide to the Xen Hypervisor is another resource.
Microsoft offers a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) certification in virtualization “for IT professionals who want to demonstrate their in-depth technical skills in these areas of Microsoft Virtualization.” Microsoft focuses on server virtualization, application virtualization, presentation virtualization and virtualization management.
The certification that aligns most closely with platform virtualization is Exam 70-652, Configuring Windows Server Virtualization.
Microsoft Press doesn’t have any publications that specifically cover Hyper-V. Fortunately, many other publishers have stepped in to fill the void. Two good choices are Windows Server Virtualization Configuration Study Guide and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V: Insiders Guide to Microsoft’s Hypervisor.
VMware is the most mature product in the platform virtualization space, having effectively created the x86 virtualization niche. VMware has two certifications that directly relate to platform virtualization:
- VMware Certified Professional (VCP) on VMware Infrastructure 3: Prerequisites for the VCP certification are attendance at a VMware sanctioned class and subsequently passing the VCP test.
- VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) on VMware Infrastructure 3: This is a more advanced certification that requires defense of a design position. It’s a light version of Cisco’s lab-based approach to certifying CCIEs. VCDX candidates must have a VCP certification. They also must submit and successfully defend a design and implementation plan.
Study aides for the VCDX are sorely lacking because the certification is so new. However, there is an abundance of resources to help prepare for a VCP, including a VCP Exam Cram, a VCP test prep book, flash cards and a video.
Shawn Conaway, VCP, MCSE, CCA, is a director of NaSPA and editor of Virtualize! and Tech Toys magazines. He can be reached at editor (at) certmag (dot) com. | <urn:uuid:e19a30c8-86fe-4bd5-bf83-95b14bfe392e> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://certmag.com/developing-high-demand-skills-virtualization/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170614.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00592-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905757 | 962 | 3.15625 | 3 |
The percentage of encrypted Internet traffic continues to grow creating a space where not only private information but also criminals can travel about undetected. In the last five years, the advent of SSL traffic from major companies like Google, YouTube, and Twitter has spawned an expansive movement toward encrypting Internet traffic for enterprises as well.
The risk in taking this security measure, though, is that while the exchange of information via the Internet is secured, bad guys can also linger unnoticed. Criminals, of course, know this and use it to their advantage, cloaking their attacks within Transport Layer Security (TLS) or Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) traffic.
Ryan Olson, director of threat intelligence unit 42, Palo Alto Networks said the concern for security professionals is that the security firewall can’t inspect the traffic. The bad guys know this, which leaves many companies trying to figure out what traffic to decrypt and how to go about decrypting.
Olson said, “The answer is not that simple. If a company decrypts everything, users are uncomfortable.” In order to secure the environment without compromising privacy, they need another layer, which means deciding from a policy perspective what they are going to encrypt and why.
“In some organizations, emails might be a threat vector, so a company might choose to decrypt that traffic, but the answer is going to differ for each company because they need to consider things from a cultural perspective as well.”
When traffic is encrypted, said Olson, it becomes this opaque glob of data. “Without being able to inspect, a criminal is hidden from those who are surveilling traffic as it would be from anyone else. You’re blind because you have no idea of what is contained inside.”
Because security teams can’t look inside the encrypted traffic, they don’t know whether it is data going out or coming in. In order to mitigate threats, security teams need to be able to see into the encrypted traffic.
Olson said, “An SSL connection occurs from browser to server. A signed certificate says ‘ok’, there’s an exchange of keys, and they encrypt all traffic from one end to the other.” The problem isn’t so much at either end, though, as it is right smack dab in the middle.
“Add a new certificate so that we can decrypt, which is only possible in a corporate environment,” said Olson. “For a security vendor to step into that traffic, they need to terminate traffic at two points. For example, a user browser reaches out to Google, a firewall captures the traffic and terminates the connection. We decrypt, inspect, re-encrypt, and then make a connection up to Google.”
In doing this, the company is still in control of the infrastructure they put in place. Olson said, “You can find a balance. Encrypt the traffic that doesn’t have a large impact on privacy. It’s a hot button topic, especially for enterprises because at the end of the day, it’s their network, their data, their computer. They are in a position to say they are allowed to surveil that data.”
Finding the balance means gaining some visibility into their network by determining how much traffic is SSL encrypted and not able to be inspected. “Everybody should ask how much traffic they want encrypted about their network. Have a conversation with users and talk about the value of SSL encryption and how they can do it without compromising privacy," said Olson.
In a recent webinar from A10 & Infonetics Research: Putting a Stop To Hidden Threats in SSL Traffic, Kasey Cross, security evangelist, A10 Networks said, “Your organization could be infected right now and you may not even be aware of it.”
Some security professionals think that they can detect threats by decrypting traffic on their firewall, but Cross said, “You really need to take into account your entire ecosystem and the fact that all of those products need to look at SSL traffic. You need to come up with a way to provide that SSL visibility to all of these product.”
The entire security ecosystem from DDoS prevention to SIEM or data loss prevention tools needs to look at traffic, including that encrypted traffic, said Cross. The trick is finding the way to provide that visibility efficiently, said Cross, “Because you don’t want to decrypt the traffic at every point or you are going to suffer really bad performance.”
Günter Ollmann, chief security officer, Vectra said, “The ability to inspect traffic is very helpful in being able to recognize loss and greatly reduce threats at the network level, but the security threats of SSL traffic are no different from any other major threats.”
While encryption does make it more difficult to detect or identify threats, Ollmann said, “If adequate logging is turned on, that logging will provide an evidence trail of the threats and activities that occurred during the attack. The SSL piece is again a metadata artifact, but the post attack investigation would focus on the logs themselves.”
Man-in-the-middle decryption offers an additional level of visibility, but Ollmann said, “Network monitoring and forensics is playing and will continue to play a larger part in identifying and mitigating these threats.”
While they can’t see the communication and they can’t see the data inside the transit, the other attributes about source information that security professionals can obtain, such as timing, frequency, and duration, can be used at a network level to detect threats.
There are virtually no performance hits to encrypting traffic, said Ollmann, but there are many business benefits.
“I think if I’m the CSO or the head of IT for an organization, I would be working on the assumption that at some point all of my traffic will be encrypted,” Ollmann said.
Right now enterprises have three options for dealing with their hidden threats in SSL. Block encrypted traffic all together, SSL termination using man-in-the-middle to inspect traffic, or the third, Ollman continued, is for the enterprise to install a number of software agents on the computer itself.
Ollmann said, "Those technologies operating on the computer itself are seeing traffic before its being encrypted so that the encryption no longer matters.” The problem with this option is that in a malware attack, the first thing it does is turn those things off.
Placing emphasis on protecting end points in order to mitigate encryption threats is a problem, said Ollmann said, “Because all of those agents assume processing power and slow down machines. With BYOD there are so many devices and operating systems that the breadth of devices that need to be protected is growing at a faster rate than vendors have the ability to provide software that are capable of protecting.”
It’s a constant battle with a real live enemy on the other side. In order to build the best defense, Ollmann said, “They should look in their environment and assume they will no longer have visibility into the data layer of their network traffic.”
This story, "Decrypt SSL traffic to detect hidden threats" was originally published by CSO. | <urn:uuid:1fa1f6ec-b6d5-4839-8c5d-31f6cd2b26f8> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.itnews.com/article/3028031/data-protection/decrypt-ssl-traffic-to-detect-hidden-threats.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170914.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00116-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959758 | 1,522 | 2.515625 | 3 |
This resource is no longer available
Risk management for government
As astonishing as it is, most organizations fail to plan for risk.
A 2008 study revealed that only 52% of respondents acknowledged having any sort of formalized program to manage risk. Even less (45%) said their organization was effective at risk management.
Today's technology allows us to assess risk easier, and advanced analytical capabilities can help identify optimal actions to respond should risky events occur.
This paper outlines the field of risk management and offers suggestions on how risk management strategies can be used in government agencies that desire an integrated view of their risks. Furthermore, discover how risk management techniques are being used today. | <urn:uuid:251f0a58-7ab9-4acc-b19c-e9b588ebb129> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.bitpipe.com/detail/RES/1341852499_313.html?asrc=RSS_BP_TERM | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170380.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00112-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945931 | 135 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Children and the Internet: Safety Rules
21 Jun 2010
Today’s Internet provides huge opportunities for children to learn more about the world in which they live, to communicate more widely and to study and have fun, but the Internet can also have a dark side. Children are often far too trusting of their virtual friends and this may lead to them unwittingly revealing personal information, or meeting someone in real life whose motives are less than pure. Some criminals will even take advantage of children’s naivety to extort money or download malware to the family computer.
However, children are not just victims on the Internet – some take part in illegal activities such as hacking.
Parents have to share some of the blame when this happens. “When their children start to get the hang of what they are doing, many parents consider that their mission is fulfilled,” Maria Namestnikova, Senior Spam Analyst at Kaspersky Lab, explains in her article ‘Children and the Internet’. “But that is when the parents’ work actually begins.”
The author suggests that one of the most effective method for parents to keep their children safe when online is to surf the Internet together, explaining what is safe and what is potentially dangerous as they go along. This approach, in combination with software solutions that include parental control functionality, offers the most all-round protection for any child. Surfing together may resolve a number of other problems of a family nature, as well as addressing issues of IT security. Anyone who cares about their child’s online safety ought to help them get to grips with this exciting new environment.
The full version of the article ‘Children and the Internet’ can be found at: www.securelist.com/en. | <urn:uuid:4386c0dc-499b-4475-98fb-83b5f37fd05e> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.kaspersky.com/au/about/news/virus/2010/Children_and_the_Internet_Safety_Rules | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170925.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00464-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959848 | 363 | 3.1875 | 3 |
According to the most recent Pew Internet Research survey, more than half of American adults own a smartphone. An American Red Cross survey published last summer showed that 25 percent of the public would download an emergency app in case of a bad weather event.
And the public sector has gotten the word. Many state and local and governments are developing mobile apps to connect residents with critical emergency-related information. While they take many forms, most try to customize information based on the risks inherent in their particular areas, and many also make key data available offline in the event that connectivity is jeopardized in an emergency situation.
Last fall, after Tropical Storm Sandy hit the East Coast, local officials quickly realized that power outages and lack of Internet access was causing people to rely on their smartphones for information.
“Mobile’s the way to go. Everyone’s looking at their smartphones these days,” said Monmouth County, N.J., Sheriff Shaun Golden, who spoke to Government Technology about the emergency app his office released last month.
Monmouth County, with more than 27 miles of coastline, is one of the largest counties in New Jersey. The storm caused billions of dollars in property damage, left thousands of people homeless and brought prolonged power outages.
“We were the hardest hit county in the state of New Jersey,” Golden said.
Golden's office helped evacuate 75,000 residents before the storm and sheltered 3,000 after the storm, when the county went two weeks without power.
“A lot of people were using their phones and staying in touch with their phones,” he said. That was when the department decided it needed to design an app for its residents.
Golden's office communicated with residents via Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms in the aftermath, with great results. It’s a lesson the sheriff applied to the development of the new application.
“The app allowed us to bring our social media … all in one place so they are readily available,” he said. “This will be a one-stop shop for us.”
Developed by Alabama-based tech firm OCV, the app is designed to look like Windows 7, featuring its hallmark flat tiles.
According to Golden, Monmouth County is the first sheriff's office in the state to launch its own app.
Released to the public in late October in a soft launch, the app was downloaded 1,000 times in the first two weeks. Feedback from the public was immediate, and positive.
The department spent $5,000 to develop the app, which is a customized version of other emergency apps on the market, including the MyEMA app.
“We kind of took a little bit of everything,” Golden said.
In addition to emergency response, Golden explained that the need to project messages to the public before storms hit is a critical part of his department’s mission.
Besides the notifications and alerts, the app also allows the public to text in anonymous crime tips, receive traffic updates and Amber Alerts and search for inmates -- Monmouth County has the largest prison facility in the state.
Additionally, the sheriff said the county is in the midst of building a new fusion center – where all of the data that comes in will be centralized under one roof, including crime analytics, emergency management information and other data deemed critical to the department’s mission.
“It’s cutting edge for New Jersey,” he said. “We’re going to continue to lead the way in technology.” | <urn:uuid:962608de-9fe9-43bc-b4dd-87f4826cf84c> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.govtech.com/applications/Pummeled-by-Sandy-New-Jersey-County-Delivers-Emergency-App-to-Residents.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171834.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00340-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961684 | 736 | 2.703125 | 3 |
TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Oct. 8, 2013) -
Editors' Note: An image is associated with this press release.
October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, an international effort to educate consumers about cybercrime, and the Canadian Bankers Association (CBA) is reminding Canadians about what banks are doing to enhance cyber security and encouraging Canadians to bank safe and foil the fraudsters.
Banks have extensive security measures in place to protect their customers from fraudulent activity in their bank and credit card accounts, including monitoring transactions looking for unusual activity, verification questions to ensure that it is the customer using online banking, and moving to more secure chip and PIN (personal identification number) debit and credit cards. These efforts have been able to prevent criminal activity and help Canadians safely do their banking and pay for purchases.
"There are also important and simple steps that customers need to take to prevent fraud, and one of the most important things is to choose secure PINs and passwords," said Maura Drew-Lytle, Director of Communications at the Canadian Bankers Association. "This is a requirement set out in your banking agreements and if customers have taken the appropriate steps, then they will be protected from fraud losses by the banks' zero liability policies."
Tips on choosing secure online passwords and PINs
Each bank will have its own requirements about choosing secure passwords and PINs, so it is best to check with your bank's online access agreement, bank account agreement or credit cardholder agreements, but there are some general guidelines to keep in mind.
When choosing online passwords, verification questions and credit and debit card PINs, avoid choosing something that would be easy to guess or information that could be obtained by others. You must not use:
- Your name or that of a close relative
- Your birth date, year of birth, telephone number or address, or that of a close relative
- Your bank account, debit card or credit card number
- A number on any other identification that you keep with your debit and credit cards in your wallet, such as a driver's licence or social insurance number
- A password or PIN used for other purposes
Other secure banking tips
- Never share your debit or credit cards, PINs and passwords with others, not even family members.
- Shield your PIN when entering it. Don't write it down, memorize it.
- Report lost or stolen cards immediately.
- Always check your monthly bank and credit card statements, or check your accounts online regularly. Make sure all the transactions are yours.
- Never give out your card number over the phone or Internet unless you are dealing with a reputable company. The only time you should give it is when you have called to place an order.
- Protect your home computer - make sure that you install anti-virus, anti-spyware and Internet firewall tools purchased from trusted retailers or suppliers. Keep these programs enabled and continuously updated to protect your devices against malicious software.
Information on choosing secure PINs and passwords is outlined in the account and cardholder agreements and electronic banking agreements. These documents are provided to customers when they open a bank or credit card account or when they sign up for online banking. They are also readily available on request at bank branches or on bank websites. It is very important that customers read and understand these agreements before choosing their PINs and passwords.
To find out more about frauds and scams, how banks protect customers and how customers can protect themselves, sign up to receive the CBA's fraud prevention tips by e-mail at www.cba.ca/fraud.
About the Canadian Bankers Association
The Canadian Bankers Association works on behalf of 57 domestic banks, foreign bank subsidiaries and foreign bank branches operating in Canada and their 275,000 employees. The CBA advocates for effective public policies that contribute to a sound, successful banking system that benefits Canadians and Canada's economy. The Association also promotes financial literacy to help Canadians make informed financial decisions and works with banks and law enforcement to help protect customers against financial crime and promote fraud awareness. www.cba.ca.
Follow the CBA on Twitter: @CdnBankers
Watch videos: Youtube.com/CdnBankers
Follow the CBA on LinkedIn
To view the image associated with this press release, please visit the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/msc_pinsafety_en.jpg | <urn:uuid:cd5098d5-c949-487a-9870-c9c12f67a36c> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/are-your-passwords-pins-secure-its-cyber-security-awareness-month-bank-safe-foil-fraudsters-1839193.htm | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170404.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00460-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933304 | 912 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Over the past few years we’ve heard more about smartphone encryption than, quite frankly, most of us expected to hear in a lifetime. We learned that proper encryption can slow down even sophisticated decryption attempts if done correctly. We’ve also learned that incorrect implementations can undo most of that security.
In other words, phone encryption is an area where details matter. For the past few weeks I’ve been looking a bit at Android Nougat’s new file-based encryption to see how well they’ve addressed some of those details in their latest release. The answer, unfortunately, is that there’s still lots of work to do. In this post I’m going to talk about a bit of that.
Background: file and disk encryption
Disk encryption is much older than smartphones. Indeed, early encrypting filesystems date back at least to the early 1990s and proprietary implementations may go back before that. Even in the relatively new area of PCs operating systems, disk encryption has been a built-in feature since the early 2000s.
The typical PC disk encryption system operates as follows. At boot time you enter a password. This is fed through a key derivation function to derive a cryptographic key. If a hardware co-processor is available (e.g., a TPM), your key is further strengthened by “tangling” it with some secrets stored in the hardware. This helps to lock encryption to a particular device.
The actual encryption can be done in one of two different ways:
- Full Disk Encryption (FDE) systems (like Truecrypt, BitLocker and FileVault) encrypt disks at the level of disk sectors. This is an all-or-nothing approach, since the encryption drivers won’t necessarily have any idea what files those sectors represent. At the same time, FDE is popular — mainly because it’s extremely easy to implement.
- File-based Encryption (FBE) systems (like EncFS and eCryptFS) encrypt individual files. This approach requires changes to the filesystem itself, but has the benefit of allowing fine grained access controls where individual files are encrypted using different keys.
Most commercial PC disk encryption software has historically opted to use the full-disk encryption (FDE) approach. Mostly this is just a matter of expediency: FDE is just significantly easier to implement. But philosophically, it also reflects a particular view of what disk encryption was meant to accomplish.
In this view, encryption is an all-or-nothing proposition. Your machine is either on or off; accessible or inaccessible. As long as you make sure to have your laptop stolen only when it’s off, disk encryption will keep you perfectly safe.
So what does this have to do with Android?
Android’s early attempts at adding encryption to their phones followed the standard PC full-disk encryption paradigm. Beginning in Android 4.4 (Kitkat) through Android 6.0 (Marshmallow), Android systems shipped with a kernel device mapper called dm-crypt designed to encrypt disks at the sector level. This represented a quick and dirty way to bring encryption to Android phones, and it made sense — if you believe that phones are just very tiny PCs.
The problem is that smartphones are not PCs.
The major difference is that smartphone users are never encouraged to shut down their device. In practice this means that — after you enter a passcode once after boot — normal users spend their whole day walking around with all their cryptographic keys in RAM. Since phone batteries live for a day or more (a long time compared to laptops) encryption doesn’t really offer much to protect you against an attacker who gets their hands on your phone during this time.
Of course, users do lock their smartphones. In principle, a clever implementation could evict sensitive cryptographic keys from RAM when the device locks, then re-derive them the next time the user logs in. Unfortunately, Android doesn’t do this — for the very simple reason that Android users want their phones to actually work. Without cryptographic keys in RAM, an FDE system loses access to everything on the storage drive. In practice this turns it into a brick.
For this very excellent reason, once you boot an Android FDE phone it will never evict its cryptographic keys from RAM. And this is not good.
So what’s the alternative?
Android is not the only game in town when it comes to phone encryption. Apple, for its part, also gave this problem a lot of thought and came to a subtly different solution.
Starting with iOS 4, Apple included a “data protection” feature to encrypt all data stored a device. But unlike Android, Apple doesn’t use the full-disk encryption paradigm. Instead, they employ a file-based encryption approach that individually encrypts each file on the device.
In the Apple system, the contents of each file is encrypted under a unique per-file key (metadata is encrypted separately). The file key is in turn encrypted with one of several “class keys” that are derived from the user passcode and some hardware secrets embedded in the processor.
The main advantage of the Apple approach is that instead of a single FDE key to rule them all, Apple can implement fine-grained access control for individual files. To enable this, iOS provides an API developers can use to specify which class key to use in encrypting any given file. The available “protection classes” include:
- Complete protection. Files encrypted with this class key can only be accessed when the device is powered up and unlocked. To ensure this, the class key is evicted from RAM a few seconds after the device locks.
- Protected Until First User Authentication. Files encrypted with this class key are protected until the user first logs in (after a reboot), and the key remains in memory.
- No protection. These files are accessible even when the device has been rebooted, and the user has not yet logged in.
By giving developers the option to individually protect different files, Apple made it possible to build applications that can work while the device is locked, while providing strong protection for files containing sensitive data.
Apple even created a fourth option for apps that simply need to create new encrypted files when the class key has been evicted from RAM. This class uses public key encryption to write new files. This is why you can safely take pictures even when your device is locked.
Apple’s approach isn’t perfect. What it is, however, is the obvious result of a long and careful thought process. All of which raises the following question…
Why the hell didn’t Android do this as well?
The short answer is Android is trying to. Sort of. Let me explain.
As of Android 7.0 (Nougat), Google has moved away from full-disk encryption as the primary mechanism for protecting data at rest. If you set a passcode on your device, Android N systems can be configured to support a more Apple-like approach that uses file encryption. So far so good.
The new system is called Direct Boot, so named because it addresses what Google obviously saw as fatal problem with Android FDE — namely, that FDE-protected phones are useless bricks following a reboot. The main advantage of the new model is that it allows phones to access some data even before you enter the passcode. This is enabled by providing developers with two separate “encryption contexts”:
- Credential encrypted storage. Files in this area are encrypted under the user’s passcode, and won’t be available until the user enters their passcode (once).
- Device encrypted storage. These files are not encrypted under the user’s passcode (though they may be encrypted using hardware secrets). Thus they are available after boot, even before the user enters a passcode.
Direct Boot even provides separate encryption contexts for different users on the phone — something I’m not quite sure what to do with. But sure, why not?
If Android is making all these changes, what’s the problem?
One thing you might have noticed is that where Apple had four categories of protection, Android N only has two. And it’s the two missing categories that cause the problems. These are the “complete protection” categories that allow the user to lock their device following first user authentication — and evict the keys from memory.
Of course, you might argue that Android could provide this by forcing application developers to switch back to “device encrypted storage” following a device lock. The problem with this idea is twofold. First, Android documentation and sample code is explicit that this isn’t how things work:
Moreover, a quick read of the documentation shows that even if you wanted to, there is no unambiguous way for Android to tell applications when the system has been re-locked. If keys are evicted when the device is locked, applications will unexpectedly find their file accesses returning errors. Even system applications tend to do badly when this happens.
And of course, this assumes that Android N will even try to evict keys when you lock the device. Here’s how the current filesystem encryption code handles locks:
While the above is bad, it’s important to stress that the real problem here is not really in the cryptography. The problem is that since Google is not giving developers proper guidance, the company may be locking Android into years of insecurity. Without (even a half-baked) solution to define a “complete” protection class, Android app developers can’t build their apps correctly to support the idea that devices can lock. Even if Android O gets around to implementing key eviction, the existing legacy app base won’t be able to handle it — since this will break a million apps that have implemented their security according to Android’s current recommendations.
In short: this is a thing you get right from the start, or you don’t do at all. It looks like — for the moment — Android isn’t getting it right.
Are keys that easy to steal?
Of course it’s reasonable to ask whether it’s having keys in RAM is that big of concern in the first place. Can these keys actually be accessed?
The answer to that question is a bit complicated. First, if you’re up against somebody with a hardware lab and forensic expertise, the answer is almost certainly “yes”. Once you’ve entered your passcode and derived the keys, they aren’t stored in some magically secure part of the phone. People with the ability to access RAM or the bus lines of the device can potentially nick them.
But that’s a lot of work. From a software perspective, it’s even worse. A software attack would require a way to get past the phone’s lockscreen in order to get running code on the device. In older (pre-N) versions of Android the attacker might need to then escalate privileges to get access to Kernel memory. Remarkably, Android N doesn’t even store its disk keys in the Kernel — instead they’re held by the “vold” daemon, which runs as user “root” in userspace. This doesn’t make exploits trivial, but it certainly isn’t the best way to handle things.
Of course, all of this is mostly irrelevant. The main point is that if the keys are loaded you don’t need to steal them. If you have a way to get past the lockscreen, you can just access files on the disk.
What about hardware?
Although a bit of a tangent, it’s worth noting that many high-end Android phones use some sort of trusted hardware to enable encryption. The most common approach is to use a trusted execution environment (TEE) running with ARM TrustZone.
This definitely solves a problem. Unfortunately it’s not quite the same problem as discussed above. ARM TrustZone — when it works correctly, which is not guaranteed — forces attackers to derive their encryption keys on the device itself, which should make offline dictionary attacks on the password much harder. In some cases, this hardware can be used to cache the keys and reveal them only when you input a biometric such as a fingerprint.
The problem here is that in Android N, this only helps you at the time the keys are being initially derived. Once that happens (i.e., following your first login), the hardware doesn’t appear to do much. The resulting derived keys seem to live forever in normal userspace RAM. While it’s possible that specific phones (e.g., Google’s Pixel, or Samsung devices) implement additional countermeasures, on stock Android N phones hardware doesn’t save you.
So what does it all mean?
How you feel about this depends on whether you’re a “glass half full” or “glass half empty” kind of person.
If you’re an optimistic type, you’ll point out that Android is clearly moving in the right direction. And while there’s a lot of work still to be done, even a half-baked implementation of file-based implementation is better than the last generation of dumb FDE Android encryption. Also: you probably also think clowns are nice.
On the other hand, you might notice that this is a pretty goddamn low standard. In other words, in 2016 Android is still struggling to deploy encryption that achieves (lock screen) security that Apple figured out six years ago. And they’re not even getting it right. That doesn’t bode well for the long term security of Android users.
And that’s a shame, because as many have pointed out, the users who rely on Android phones are disproportionately poorer and more at-risk. By treating encryption as a relatively low priority, Google is basically telling these people that they shouldn’t get the same protections as other users. This may keep the FBI off Google’s backs, but in the long term it’s bad judgement on Google’s part. | <urn:uuid:841622cf-3f49-4549-87a9-cc5e1a9f505a> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/category/android/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170404.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00460-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930469 | 2,962 | 2.671875 | 3 |
You may have noticed an upswing in media reporting on swine flu, or H1N1, cases. This upswing is in relation to the sudden upswing in human cases of swine flu in the southern states of Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama.
The truth is that H1N1 cases are on the upswing in many states. This could be due to several factors, including the beginning of the predicted "third wave" of pandemic influenza. Or it could be the fact that influenza "smoulders," and we have a few little patches of fire that need to be put out.
One day, the third wave will occur. It might be the start now, or it could be later in 2010. Or it could be even in 2011. No one knows for certain.
In Georgia, after a period of weeks of inactivity, hospitalizations from H1N1 have spiked. And so have deaths. There were more hospitalizations in two weeks from H1N1 in Georgia than in October, 2009, when the pandemic's second wave hit its stride.
But wait, you ask! Flu season is almost over! Flu doesn't hit in the late Spring.
That is partially true. Seasonal flu does not normally hit in late Spring. But a pandemic strain knows no boundaries. And remember that pandemic flu plays "King of the Mountain," meaning it wipes the floor with seasonal strains. There is practically no seasonal flu at all, anywhere in the world outside of Asia. Maybe a little Influenza B here in the States. But other than that, zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada.
That leaves H1N1 alone to do what it will. Swine flu is still infecting deep into Africa, and schools in sub-Saharan Africa are beginning to issue closure orders in response to the virus. And H1N1 is still reaching its tendrils deep into remote areas of Asia, where bird flu is re-emerging as a threat.
The biggest fear is that swine flu will reassort (swap genes) with bird flu in one or more of the flash points where the two strains intersect. That would be Egypt, Indonesia, and pretty much anywhere in Southeast Asia.
Vietnam, for example, has already had several human bird flu cases (and deaths) since January.
Egypt has already seen over a dozen human bird flu cases since January (about one confirmed H5N1 human case every three days). At one point this year, Egypt had more confirmed human bird flu cases than America had confirmed seasonal influenza cases! This statistical quirk was not lost on the WHO, which has stepped up its H5N1 surveillance efforts worldwide.
But even if it does not hook up with bird flu, H1N1 has already been a virus to watch carefully. Recently, the Center for Infectious Disease Reasearch and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota issued a report on the effects of H1N1. Among its conclusions:
More than 85% of the H1N1(2009) deaths were in people younger than 60, with an overall mean age of 37.4, as compared with an estimated mean age of 76 in those who die of seasonal flu.
the H1N1 (2009) pandemic, so far, has taken a toll of between 334,000 and 1,973,000 years of life lost (YLL) in the United States.
- The 1968 pandemic, with 86,000 deaths and victims averaging 62.2 years old, caused 1,693,000 Years of Life Lost (YLL).
- The 1957 pandemic, with 150,600 deaths and a mean age of 64.6, caused 2,698,000 YLL.
- The 1918 pandemic, with an estimated 1,272,300 deaths and a mean age of only 27.2, exacted a toll of 63,718,000 YLL.
- An average flu season dominated by influenza A/H3N2-which generally causes more severe epidemics than other strains-causes 47,800 deaths and 594,000 YLL, with a mean age of 75.7.
From the CIDRAP press release:
Thus, the authors say, the lower end of their YLL estimate for the H1N1 pandemic is comparable to the estimate for an H3N2-dominated flu season, while the upper end is greater than that for the 1968 pandemic. Those impacts, of course, are dwarfed by that of the catastrophic 1918 pandemic.
"Based on US mortality surveillance data, we conclude that the YLL burden of the 2009 pandemic may in fact be as high as for the 1968 pandemic-but that at this time the assessment is still tentative," the report states. More waves of H1N1 cases are likely to come over the next few flu seasons, and later waves could be worse, it says.
So what does this mean for you, IT person? It means you had better get your H1N1 vaccine while it is still viable. Clinics and health departments are running low on viable vaccine. Some doses will expire soon and will have to be thrown out.
It also means you need to look again at your younger workers as potential candidates for illness or even death. When the third wave comes through, there is no way to know how it will impact your workforce. And contrary to popular belief, this has not been a "mild" pandemic, as the CIDRAP report confirms. It has been a light pandemic, possibly. But its impact in years of life lost is far from mild.
Do not dismantle your telework program. Instead, test it again. Go back over your DR and COOP operations with two eyes on target: One on the third wave (and possible fourth wave), and the other on your natural disaster plans (especially in hurricane-prone and earthquake-prone areas). Finally, go back over that cross-training matrix again. try to be cross-trained at least three-deep.
And while you're at it, get yourself vaccinated against H1N1. You are no good to your organization if you are sick - or worse. | <urn:uuid:becf2f3c-62ae-4f17-8abc-bcd7d88d5973> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.computerworld.com/article/2468709/data-center/don-t-write-off-h1n1-pandemic----yet.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170696.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00636-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968808 | 1,293 | 2.625 | 3 |
Oil spill: Technology tested by tyranny of depth
Efforts to stem the flow of crude oil gushing from a damaged well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico illustrate the limits of oil-spill technology
- By John Zyskowski
- May 07, 2010
The ongoing efforts to stem the flow of crude oil gushing from a damaged well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico have illustrated the limits of the technology used by the government and private sector to respond to such calamities.
The primary challenge comes from the location of the leak 5,000 feet below the surface of the water, where the “tyranny of distance and depth” have hampered attempts to apply a mechanical fix to the severed pipe, said Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen, who was designated as the national incident commander to coordinate efforts by federal agencies and BP, the owner of the oil field.
The accident occurred April 20 after an explosion destroyed the offshore drilling rig, which Transocean operates under a contract with BP. Eleven rig workers are unaccounted for and presumed dead. Estimates about the rate at which oil is leaking vary from 5,000 to 25,000 barrels a day, which further complicates efforts to contain the spill.
“In the past, most of these events have related to surface incidents or collisions of very large ships carrying crude oil," Allen said. "And we've been able to actually quantify how much oil was at risk. What makes this anomalous is, until we cap the well, we have an indeterminate [amount] of oil potentially that could come to the surface and have to be dealt with.”
Even if the flow amount could be pinpointed, accurately predicting how an underwater leak will disperse is beyond the capability of current computer modeling software, which relies on surface measurements such as wave heights and wind speed and direction to determine where the oil is likely headed, writes Sandi Doughton for the Seattle Times.
Doughton reports how scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Emergency Response Division in Seattle have used modeling tools first to guide the search for survivors and then later to direct response crews trying to minimize environmental damage.
Meanwhile, NASA satellites equipped with Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometers provided responders with a multispectral, high-altitude view of the spreading oil. However, the satellites cannot glean important information related to the thickness of the slick, which is crucial for knowing where skimmers can do the most good, writes Adam Hadhazy for TechNewsDaily.
"With this particular spill, it is so large they can use satellite imagery to get a gross outline, but they are not able to get thickness variations," said Judd Muskat, an environmental scientist at the Office of Spill Prevention and Response at the California Department of Fish and Game.
For that, responders will likely turn to OSPR's special, portable multispectral sensing equipment for use on aircraft. Muskat said he and his colleagues expect to be deployed to the Gulf of Mexico to assist with the disaster effort.
During the early stages of the crisis, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said industry has much of the technology and assets required to support the response mission. However, BP has asked the Navy to call in some subsea imaging technology and remote operating equipment that apparently is not available commercially to help plug the underwater leak, reports Elizabeth Montalbano in InformationWeek.
Outside government and industry, a New Orleans advocacy group is tapping into a technology created to track political violence in Kenya to log the effects of the oil spill on the Gulf Coast, reports Sarah Wheaton in the New York Times. The Louisiana Bucket Brigade Web site uses witnesses’ texts, tweets and e-mail messages to generate a rainbow of dots on a map and a database of spill-related damage, such as reports of odors, unemployed fishermen and affected wildlife.
“We will have absolutely crystal-clear data about people affected, and that should certainly inform policy-makers,” said Anne Rolfes, the group’s director.
John Zyskowski is a senior editor of Federal Computer Week. Follow him on Twitter: @ZyskowskiWriter. | <urn:uuid:6576004b-1e0f-4757-be11-24ca7dac0fb5> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://fcw.com/articles/2010/05/10/buzz-oil-spill-technology-noaa.aspx | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170696.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00636-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948314 | 859 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Black Box Explains Fiber Signal Sources and Detectors
To use fiber optic cables for communications, electrical signals must be converted to light, transmitted, received, and converted back from light to electrical signals. This requires optical sources and detectors that can operate at the data rates of the communications system.
There are two main categories of optical signal sources—light emitting diodes and infrared laser diodes.
Light emitting diodes (LEDs) are the lower-cost, lower-performance source. They’re used in applications where lower data rates and/or shorter distances are acceptable. Infrared laser diodes operate at much higher speeds, dissipate higher power levels, and require temperature compensation or control to maintain specified performance levels. They are also more costly.
Signal detectors also fall into two main categories—PIN photodiodes and avalanche photodiodes.
Similar to sources, the two types provide much different cost/performance ratios. PIN photodiodes are more commonly used, especially in less stringent applications. Avalanche photodiodes, on the other hand, are very sensitive and can be used where longer distances and higher data rates are involved. | <urn:uuid:36543d9e-8c0e-4770-b970-001e6dab5e0c> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.blackbox.com/en-ca/products/black-box-explains/fiber-signal-sources-and-detectors | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171176.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00336-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.876895 | 240 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Hi, welcome to the Certification Kits presentation on how to build your very own CCENT/ CCNA home lab. A common question we get is, how many routers to I really need in my lab? As you can see on the slide on the screen, one router will give you the ability to run the commands on it and allow you to memorize the correct syntax in context in which to run the commands. However, two routers are really required to see if anything works. So what do I mean by that? With Cisco CCNA exam is built around the propagation of data in route tables. The only way you can see this in action is to have at least two routers. Two routers will allow you to see the data propagate, route table information propagate, and path elections. In addition, you’ll be able to see some basic device selections. Whereas three or more routers, and you’ll get all those things we just talked about, be able to experience more complex topologies and see full device selections. So for those reasons, we really do suggest that you have three routers in your lab. You may say, you know what, I have seen another video or article that said I only need two routers, why are you saying that I need three routers? That’s a good question and we’re going to cover that between this and the next slide.
Now, if you take a look at this slide you’ll see a OSPF topology from our free CCNA study guide. We want a configured environment so we know that R2 will be the designated router. Well there are actually a couple ways we can accomplish this, so at a real high level if we only had two routers, say R1 and R2, we could set R1 with the priority of 0 and then R2 would, by default, be the designated router. But that is not real world, as most companies you will work for, probably any company you work for, will have many more than two routers. So, once we add the third router into the mix, would R2 still be the designated router? I don’t know, but by changing a priority on R2 and leaving R3 the default priority, we can assure that. So I think you could start to see why three routers is our preferred topology, as this can be applied to many of the CCNA concepts that you’ll see.
So let’s take another look in an example why we believe three routers is the right way to go. If we have just a simple two router scenario, we basically have one subnet, and you can argue we could have another one on each Ethernet, so we have a total of 3 subnets in this environment. Now let’s compare that to our EIGRP lab that we have in our lab workbook. This is a 32-page lab, and what we have here, we have dual WAN links between R1 and R3, that could be like New York and San Francisco, so it’s a real company, they have to have redundancy here. We have some LAN links here, so you understand the different encapsulation protocols between WAN and LAN. So we have multiple paths, we could have multiple costs on the different LAN links, we could have load balancing and we could have more complex route tables because now we have a total of 6 different subnets, where here we’re tapped out with the maximum of three. So, I think you can see clearly that this is a much more realistic scenario of what you will see in the real world, where this is so simplistic it really doesn’t get to the meat and potatoes of routing and switching.
So hopefully you’ll agree in those couple scenarios we just showed you, you can see the benefits of having three routers. And if you can afford it, go that way, if you can’t, two routers is still a great environment. Now let’s just take a real quick look at some of the features. We have this table actually on our website at certificationkits.com and I’m going to show you where at the end of the presentation. But, what we will have when you go through this article, you’ll see the different models, what the requirements are memory-wise for Ipv6, whether or not it supports CCP, the max IOS version, whether its 15.x for your 2801, and your 1841s, 12.4 for the 1700 series, 12.3 for the 2500 and a different integrated ports, slots, and such.
Now something I think we really need to address because we’ve been getting a lot of questions because there have been a couple articles out there and videos about the 1721 routers. People just want a bunch of 1721 routers in their lab, and we don’t actually think that’s a really great idea, but maybe we can explain that to you quick. You see, it’s important, if you look down here at the lab alert, that you get the right mix of routers in your lab. Not every router has to have the same capabilities and functions and same features. You’ll want maybe one router to be your dual Ethernet router that can do your NAT PAT stuff, and then every other router might not necessarily have to have dual Ethernet in it. So, different features, functionalities, operating systems versions, IOS versions. It could be a mix of full featured routers and more basic routers such as you see in the CCIE labs. For instance, the current CCIE lab version 4, it has two 2501 routers in it. That’s a CCIE lab, they’re just acting as edge routers, they don’t need to be as powerful as maybe the core routers, or have as many features. So again, the key is getting the right mix of routers and switches in your lab.
So, let’s just talk a little about the 1701’s because we’re getting a lot of questions about that. The pros; it’s small, it’s quiet, and it supports 12.4, and it’s cheap, great! The cons, why I’m not a real big fan of it, not easily stackable or rack-able, there is this bulky external power supply which has a high failure rate. Generally when they came from Cisco they were 64/32, now the big thing about this is hey, it’s a 12.4 router, great. However, if they only have 64/32 memory, you’re going to have to purchase a memory upgrade. And as you start to add that cost to it then, hey, you want to make it a dual Ethernet router, just add a WIC-1ENET to it. Well, that router had a specialized module for the second Ethernet port, that wasn’t as mass produced as the other routers or modules, and thus that module is kind of on the expensive side. You’re going to be $35 to $40 into that module by the time it’s shipped and all that stuff, so you might have been better off getting a much better router in my opinion, like a 2611XM. It’s more expandable, more features, things along those lines.
So, what am I talking about as far as it not being stackable and rack-able and what? We generally have two scenarios with people in their home labs, either stack everything on their desk like here on the left, or have a sweet rack like over here on the right.
So if you’re stacking it over here on the left, you can see how these 1721’s they stack up on there, but they’re plastic and they fall and break. You’ve got this big power cube on the side. I’m just not a real big fan of them as you can tell. At least on these you can have them nice and neat, you have your 2600 series, 2500 series, 1800 series, whatever it is they are all rackable. If you do decide to go with the rack, you’ve got this sweet little setup. You can put it under your desk or you can put it on top of the desk. It keeps everything nice and compact so that nobody is complaining, tripping over it, and pulling out your cables.
So, now how many switches do I need? Just like with the routers, one switch will give you the ability to run the commands on the switch, memorize the correct syntax and context, in which to run the commands, and allow you to do some of the VLAN labs. Two switches will allow you to see VTP domain information and VLAN information propagate. In addition you will see basic device elections like on your routers. Three or more you will have full device elections, more complex scenarios. Now, every now and then, we will get some really smart Cisco people. Maybe they’re at the CCNP level or higher or what have you, or really great CCNA’s. And they’ll say, you know what, you don’t really need that third switch on that second switch. You go and VLAN it, you could do this, that, and the other, and simulate everything you’re talking there with the full device elections and such, and some of the other scenarios we’re going to cover. And I do agree with that, but here’s the problem. We’re trying to get someone to understand this from the ground up, and you’re talking about $35 more for this extra switch. If they knew how to do this off the top of their head, you’re probably already a CCNA so you don’t need a lab such as this, and you’ve already passed it. But let me just show you now what you can do with three switches.
So now with three switches and this slide, you can see, and again this is from our free CCNA study guide. We have a scenario which we are talking about spanning-tree here , and there’s a lot of different concepts that we’re going to talk about. The root bridge, the designated bridge, the non-designated ports, root ports, forwarding ports, blocking ports, which are doing which. And you can’t really do this and experience it in a real world scenario unless you have the three switches. If you took one out, it just doesn’t happen. If you VLAN one off you could probably do a lot of it, but it just doesn’t sink into the student as easily, because that induces some other issues.
So, next thing is switch features. What switches do we recommend, which ones should we look for, stay away from, things along those lines. So, you’re going to stay away from the 1900 series, the 1912, 1924, the plain 2900 series, of the 2912, the , 2924, the 2924m and also the 3512, 3524s. A lot of people get confused with those and the 3550 and 3560s because the 3550s and 3560s are layer 3, as you can see on the slide, the 3512s and 3524s are not a layer 3 switch. Now a really great model for the CCNA exam in your lab scenario will be the 2950 switch, and that comes in SI and EI version. Now EI, enhanced image, supports Enhanced QoS, 802.1s is your multiple instance spanning tree and 802.1w your rapid spanning tree, you’re going to see some of that stuff on the exam. If you can, upgrade to a 2950 to support that, which are generally your C models, your T models, things along those lines. Now some people say that Cisco says you should have the 2960, why are we not saying that you absolutely have to have a 2960 in your lab? Well, think about it from Cisco’s perspective. When they wrote the exam, the 2950 had been sunset for five years, are they going to tell you to go buy something that is five years old for your lab? No, they want you up to date on the latest technology and hardware, so this way when you’re working in the real world, you’re going to be able to be familiar with that hardware and IOS there. But the reality is 2550, 2560 pretty similar, you will be fine with either. Now that brings us to the 3550, 3560 switches. They are Layer 3 switches, they can route, really cool feature. I like to have a 3550 in your CCNA lab, it is touched on a little bit. But again, if you can’t afford it, not a big deal. But you definitely have to have 3550s and 3560s once you get up to your CCNP exams.
Now something I want you not to overlook, getting a bunch of equipment and having it on your desk is not helpful if you don’t have really good labs to follow. If you get, whether it’s a Cisco Press study guide, or Todd’s book, or some of the other books out there like the Brian Advantage ones. They really don’t have much in regards to labs. They have a lot of great theory and their study guide might be 600-700 pages, it’s a smaller size format, and the labs might encompass 20-30 pages total. Most of the labs are one to two pages. Our lab workbook is 450 pages, 8.5” by 11”, so there is a lot of information in our lab workbook. Also with our labs that we sell, we include a Cram Sheet, a How and Why we Subnet Workbook with over 100 examples that you have to go through, exercises, and this book is also over 100 pages. We have our Exam Prep Tools which gives you our Exam Test Engine, Electronic Flash Cards, TFTP Server, Subnet Calculator, Binary Bits Game, and 40 plus Instructional Videos. We have this cool poster that we also send out that has comparisons of IPv4 and IPv6. So, just getting hardware if you don’t have labs to follow, it really doesn’t matter, it’s not going to be that helpful to you.
And finally, as I mentioned earlier in the presentation, if you go to certificationkits.com, and you go over to lab suggestions, and you click CCNA, you’ll see all that information I just talked about, and actually there’s more information there and there’s some tables showing the various routers, switches, IOS versions, what you need. Take some time to chew on it, there’s a lot of good information there. I also might suggest if you go down to the CCNA study center, you will see that we have a free CCNA study guide there, use it! There’s a lot of good information. If you have any questions for us, please feel free to go over here to the Contact Us and shoot us an email. We are here to help you pass your Cisco Certifications, whether its CCNA, CCNP, or CCIE. Thank you and have a great day. | <urn:uuid:33ac3c8a-93c7-40d1-b500-cbdd113a68b3> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.certificationkits.com/diy-ccna-lab-kit-video/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501174154.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104614-00388-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960254 | 3,229 | 2.765625 | 3 |
At first glance, this picture may not look much like a classroom. It clearly has some elements in common with today’s teaching spaces like chairs, tables, flat screen displays, as well as students and a teacher. But the students and teacher are wearing something on their heads. And why is there a large dinosaur in the room?
The physical classroom of 2020 will not be all that different from today’s classroom. But, the media used for teaching and learning, which had stayed constant for centuries, is now undergoing accelerated change. Likewise, the content being taught is advancing, especially in terms of personalization.
Virtual and mixed reality are entering the classroom and bringing subjects to life. Virtual field trips to museums, historical sites, even to past periods in history are now possible without leaving the classroom. Google virtual Expeditions take students on “guided tours of places school buses can’t go.” For the low cost of $11.99 (quantity one, as of this writing) Google Cardboard provides a 3D immersive virtual reality experience to students. Each Cardboard requires a smartphone to function, but almost any Android or iOS phone will suffice.
Perhaps even more significant than occasional field trips, are the new possibilities that virtual and mixed reality offer to engage students with traditional subjects. Learners are able to collaboratively interact with virtual objects in mixed reality. They can simultaneously share experiences either while inside the classroom or remotely.
The educational content and subject matter being taught today is changing in three ways. First, it is being adapted to take best advantage of the new media; second, it is constantly updated to align with our evolving knowledge of science and history; and third, it is modified to incorporate new methods for effectively teaching traditional subjects like math and language.
The Accelerating Evolution Of Classroom Media
The components that comprise a traditional textbook date back to 100 BC, when paper was first used in China. It took almost 2,000 years for the printing press and typesetting to make it easier to reproduce books. After another 530 years, digital displays and word processing arrived. Low cost eBooks, such as the Kindle, were introduced 27 years after basic word processing. Now, nine years following the eBook, we have virtual and mixed reality coming onto the scene. Based on this exponentially-accelerating trend in media innovation, the next revolutionary medium may be just around the corner. It’s possible that an entirely new method of communication beyond virtual reality awaits us. Google and Samsung are hard at work on smart contact lenses capable of taking photos and projecting images directly into wearer’s eye. Maybe in the future, images will bypass the human optical system, feeding instead directly into the visual cortex.
A Close Look At The 2020 Classroom
What are safe predictions for the 2020 classroom? The walls, carpets, and windows will likely be similar to those of today; although there is a more distant vision entailing an entirely-virtual school that completely eliminates the need for a dedicated school building. Similarly, the classroom of 2020 will still need to accommodate eBooks, displays, monitors, and student devices with keyboards. Even if voice input technology becomes much better than it is today, keyboards will still fulfill a need for interacting in noisy rooms. Display devices must be capable of displaying growing amounts of streaming data, including high definition videos, and will require more Wi-Fi bandwidth than ever before.
The classroom environment or climate, including room temperature, humidity, CO2 and O2 levels, along with other aspects of air quality can be constantly monitored, controlled, and adjusted to desirable conditions. Need a slightly cooler temperature during a particularly-active lesson? No problem. The same applies to lighting, which can be programmed to optimally match the students’ natural biorhythms, no matter what the actual local weather conditions are on a particular day. Even the smell of the classroom can be programmed for optimal learning during each lesson.
The role of the teacher is continuing to evolve from primarily a deliverer of content, to one of facilitator and traffic director, who jumps in when individual students require supplemental help. The instructor can monitor each student’s activities with both video and audio feeds. They can steer the lesson flow by means of a controller.
Classroom attendance is automatically updated by means of a camera located near the front of the room. During testing the camera works in conjunction with keystroke recording and realtime answer tracking to prevent cheating.
The advent of the Internet of Things is making science class more engaging. Low cost devices like PocketLab and Lab4U that attach to smartphones provide powerful science lab instruments, capable of measuring acceleration, force, angular velocity, magnetic field, pressure, altitude, and temperature. Combine these sensors with robotics and controllers, and students can directly participate in science experiments without being present in the classroom. Hazardous experiments, which in the past would have been impossible for students to watch may now take place in virtual reality.
Wearables are having an impact on the classroom. Fitness and heart rate monitor bands provide constant data on student health. Theoretically, teachers could monitor how each lesson affects the students’ vital signs, in order to better understand who is paying attention. Several types of emerging wearables attach to the student’s skull. The Thync module helps reduce student stress and the neural enhancing cap developed by Vanderbilt University boosts learning by stimulating the brain’s medial-frontal cortex.
The Demise of Distraction?
One of the major problems with the proliferation of small personal devices has been the temptation for distraction. Students find it difficult to impossible to resist the lure of an incoming text message. A very interesting side benefit of the head-mounted display (HMD) is that they command 100% of the wearer’s attention. The student wearing an HMD cannot text on their phone. Distraction is completely eliminated.
Equally as noteworthy as what to expect in the 2020 classroom is what will be missing. Some of the absent items are relatively minor like incandescent or fluorescent lighting. Efficient Wi-Fi-programmable, multiple-hue LED lighting will take over. Traditional books along with paper and pencils will fade away. The need for printing is gone. Most importantly, the classroom no longer has wires to get in the way, cause tripping, or lead to disruption when they inadvertently become disconnected. In the very near future, all devices will be connected wirelessly, by a robust, high performance Wi-Fi network.
One high performance 801.11ac Wave 2 access point provides full coverage bandwidth for the classroom of 2020.
The primary uncertainty for the classroom of 2020 is how the infrastructure and devices will be used and what content will travel across it. But that question is up to the educators designing tomorrow’s curriculum. As providers of the technology, we will deliver the best learning environment, one that can animate the most engaging educational content.
The post Will There Still Be A Classroom In 2020? – How did a dinosaur get in the room? appeared first on Extreme Networks. | <urn:uuid:6841bc7f-1901-4a3c-b152-2b59d85a3452> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://content.extremenetworks.com/h/i/319064664-will-there-still-be-a-classroom-in-2020-how-did-a-dinosaur-get-in-the-room | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170708.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00332-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946418 | 1,449 | 3.328125 | 3 |
One of the fundamental tenets of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) is the idea of "matching and mirroring" - the idea that we create rapport between individuals by mirroring aspects of their physiology in ourselves and, because they see someone who looks like them, they're more likely to enter in to a rapportive state with us.
This effect does have some amount of basis and has been studied quite significantly - psychologists tend to call it the "chameleon effect", based on the landmark 1999 study by Chartrand and Bargh. Their definition:
"The chameleon effect refers to nonconscious mimicry of the postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of one's interaction partners, such that one's behavior passively and unintentionally changes to match that of others in one's current social environment."
The studies have shown that the effect of mirroring is present across most studies that have been performed - in particular, the Chartrand/Bargh study found significant impacts of mimicry on the rapport set of those studied. (Although, as Chartrand & Bargh note, some studies (LaFrance) have noted that the effect doesn't exist or depends on other aspects of a relationship between those being studied)
The problem comes when we consider the reason for rapport from an evolutionary perspective - we have evolved rapport and mimicry to facilitate social interaction between humans, not as a one-way process. That is, when I mirror you, I am unconsciously reproducing your state within me - this is facilitated by the "mirror neurons" (the posterior inferior frontal gyrus and adjacent ventral premotor cortex, as well as the rostral inferior parietal lobule as described by Iacoboni) - we are able to mimic another because we perceive their behavior and, in so doing it, represent it within ourselves.
Note that this is the other half of the cybernetic loop that is edited out in the studies (and much traditional teaching of NLP) - in mimicing another successfully, we unconsciously represent their state within ourselves. While the Chartrand/Bargh study talked about the target of the mirroring liking the study confederate more when mirrored, there wasn't a corresponding questionaire filled out by said confederate to determine whether they had increased liking for the person being mirrored. Obviously, this would have had some methodological concerns. (Note that Chartrand and Bargh noticed the potential issue that this half of the cybernetic loop wasn't being respected, and attempted to control for other behaviors - however, the question of the subtlety of mirroring behaviors on the behalf of the confederate is still open - I'd love to see a FACS coding of some of the samples of the confederates against those of the participants and note facial / micro-expression similarities.)
The state being mimiced is, in effect, dual-sided - that is, the more precisely we replicate the state of the other person, the more effectively we display the chameleon effect. It is this behavior that Chartrand & Bargh noted in their third experimental condition - that, at an unconscious level, those of us who tend to take other's perspective (which can correlate to but isn't the same as the traditional emotional definition of empathy) more often have a better developed set of strategies for adopting mirrored positions with others.
This, in my opinion, leads to a lot of the problems with the traditional NLP model for learning matching and mirroring. As Grinder said in "Whispering in the Wind", there are two criteria for the evaluation of a model:
- Is it learnable?
- Does it lead to the learner producing results congruent with the original source of the model?
While any six-year old can learn the NLP version of matching and mirroring (i.e. "monkey see, monkey do"), it's the second condition that is much more problematic. Many who attempt to learn to create rapport through traditional means end up with matching/mirroring processes that, rather than create rapport more often, come off with the subtlety of a bad used car salesman. The reason for this is that we aren't effectively attempting to teach the student of NLP how to mirror states, but only to broadly mirror large parts of behavior - we're not respecting that rapport is a cybernetic process with multiple sides to the loop. And anybody teaching it from the perspective of behavior/posture isn't respecting the other side of the loop (at least consciously).
In fact, in my own modeling of those who are excellent at creating rapport, it's not their ability to mirror posture or breathing pattern or eye blinks that is most effective - it's the ability to mirror and represent within themselves the state of those around them and to effectively convey that mirrored state (usually at a completely unconscious level).
Grinder also noted this in Whispering, when he stated that calibration is "the most fundamental of all NLP processes". The person who is most effective at creating rapport with others is the one who most precisely calibrates the state of the other person and, upon representing that state within themselves, unconsciously adopts whatever behaviors are appropriate, regardless of whether they precisely "mimic" the other person.
The student who attempts to learn to create matching and mirroring without understanding how to effectively calibrate (which, using NLP terminology, is akin to an unconscious shift in to second position) doesn't become (in the Chartrand/Bargh terminology) a "high perspective taker", which is one of the fundamental bases of being effective when it comes to matching and mirroring.
That is, the goal in matching and mirroring isn't to replicate behavior - replication of behavior comes naturally when we effectively can adopt and replicate the state of the other person within the interaction. To attempt to mimic the behavior generally works only in so far as that adopting a matched physiology can assist in replicating state. | <urn:uuid:85bf99c7-9235-44fc-b206-a7240574a079> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.episteme.ca/2011/07/26/matching-and-mirroring-or-cybernetic-issues-in-nlp/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171632.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00208-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96182 | 1,214 | 3.0625 | 3 |
One of 2016’s key events in the tech world was the massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack in October that brought many of the internet’s most heavily trafficked sites to their knees.
There were two main takeaways from the event. Firstly, DNS infrastructure is highly vulnerable. And secondly, the growing proliferation of cheap, connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices – webcams, Wi-Fi speakers, wearables etc. – is making it far easier for cybercriminals to launch massive DDoS attacks.
Why? Because many of these devices are shipped with default usernames and passwords, which are never changed by the enduser, and so are easily taken over. Earlier in October, the Mirai botnet malware was made public, and it evidently played a role in the attack.
In 2017 businesses are sure to suffer more DDoS attacks and internet shutdowns powered by cheap, insecure IoT devices. But while these attacks could become more common, they’re also likely to become less lethal as backbone providers harden their defenses and device manufacturers adopt identity-based security to close vulnerabilities.
However, the sheer number of cheap AND insecure IoT devices deployed globally will ensure DDoS attacks continue sporadically through 2017.
Catastrophic DDoS attacks might dominate tech media coverage, but the failure of IoT device, service and infrastructure to adopt and scale robust security and privacy tactics will play out in several ways.
Here are four sectors that will face the brunt of this as digital transformation takes hold in 2017.
In 2017, the distinction between in-home and clinical healthcare devices will continue to erode.
To date, smart wearables and exercise devices like Fitbits and Apple Watches have been perceived as a means to track exercise in order to further fitness goals – distinct from clinical medical devices like heart monitors, blood pressure cuffs or insulin pumps.
At the same time, it’s become common for patients with high blood pressure to monitor their levels at home by capturing them on a mobile app on their phone – exactly how fitness trackers work.
The wealth of data available to clinicians flowing from such devices is leading to expectations that individuals can and perhaps should play much more active roles in preventative care.
But the ease with which personal health data can now be gathered and shared will increase pressure on healthcare IT decision-makers to turn to identity management and authentication as the technology most effective for achieving security objectives.
The proliferation of digital systems and devices in healthcare settings creates more vulnerabilities where personal data can get exposed or stolen.
By adding contextual authentication and authorisation through strong digital identity, hacking these systems becomes more difficult. For example, adding presence, geo-location and or persistent authentication.
2. Financial services
In 2017, commercial banks and investment houses will continue the race to avoid having their business models disrupted by fintech innovation such as Bitcoin and emerging artificial intelligence technologies.
Banks are already co-opting these disruptive technologies and incorporating them into their own IT mix.
Somewhat ironically, having established relationships with their customers, many legacy banks could be very well positioned to not just weather the digital transformation storm, but emerge even more stable and profitable in the years ahead.
This is especially true for those that embrace omnichannel techniques and technologies to create seamless experiences that delight customers across devices.
Banks in 2017 will work on allaying customer privacy concerns as they cope with regulations regarding data protection and sharing. There will be a continued effort to eliminate internal data silos that create impersonal customer experiences across channels, and fragmented systems that can’t support digital customer demands and business requirements.
The race toward omnichannel will accelerate in 2017 as many retailers and B2C organisations find themselves doing more business via mobile than they’re doing on the conventional laptop and online channel.
Delivering convenience and seamless experiences will depend heavily on providing customers with experiences that are not just secure but also personalised to their needs and tastes.
In order to do this, they must securely connect the digital identities of people, devices and things. This requires solving complex identity challenges and creating solutions that enhance and improve customer experiences and at the same time maximise revenue opportunities.
4. Communications and media
AT&T’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner at the end of 2016 highlights exactly how vulnerable legacy media and telecommunications firms perceive themselves to be to disruptive forces like cord cutting.
‘Digital pipe’ companies feel like they need to lock in content providers in order to lock in audiences and preserve value. However, regulators may frown on such industry consolidation, and independent players like Netflix and semi-independent players like Hulu and independent cable TV producers continue to find ways to directly insert successful content into the entertainment bloodstream.
Here again, making content easily accessible through the full array of channels is key to locking in loyalty and preserving lifetime value (LTV).
Sourced from Simon Moffatt, ForgeRock | <urn:uuid:0eee275f-8b3f-4564-8c1d-a946a0c3e5c5> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.information-age.com/4-sectors-vulnerable-iot-attacks-2017-123463488/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171632.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00208-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948263 | 1,013 | 2.53125 | 3 |
The active drug in Tylenol, acetaminophen, is one of the best medications we have for helping people in pain. It's also one the most commonly overdosed substances in the world and puts about 60,000 Americans in the hospital every year. Several hundred people in the U.S. will die in 2013 from liver failure after acetaminophen overdose.
Tylenol isn't addictive like narcotics, and the kids don't take it to get high, which lends it an air of benignity and social acceptance not otherwise afforded to many pain medications. When people overdose on pills like Vicodin or Percocet, though, which contain acetaminophen, it's that component that often does the most damage.
Acetaminophen is also more accepted in that we don't think of Tylenol as altering our mental state. People can take it and still drive a car and go to work and remain fully present beings. But the more it's studied, the more it seems we may be overlooking subtle cognitive effects. In 2009, research showed that it seemed to dull the pain of social rejection -- sort of like alcohol or Xanax. The author of that study, Nathan DeWall at the University of Kentucky, said at that time, "Social pain, such as chronic loneliness, damages health as much as smoking and obesity." | <urn:uuid:efb6fe2a-8bbc-49f4-bafb-12df88342b48> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.nextgov.com/health/2013/04/whats-tylenol-doing-our-minds/62653/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171646.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00556-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972115 | 276 | 2.75 | 3 |
There's one fundamental thing to keep in mind when it comes to border protection. Knowing and tracking an intruder's direction of travel can be much more important than building a physical barrier. Human beings are very creative when it comes to getting around things that block their progress, so once a border is breached, actual enforcement happens after the crossing.
A couple of years ago I had a chance to meet a group of border patrol agents from Texas. They were in Washington D.C. to participate in a conference focused on police and national security issues.
We talked about ways to close the holes in the U.S. Mexican border and the subject of walls came up. One of the officers rolled his eyes. I don't remember his exact words but he stressed that walls are great for urban areas, but they have minimal impact in rural areas where the nearest border patrol agent might be located miles away.
The same can be said for sensors – if those sensors are located only along the border itself.
Spread too Thin
Once someone manages to illegally cross a border, including a border wall, the agent said, they can run in any direction. When a border patrol officer arrives in the area where a sensor has been tripped, he or she has to figure out which direction the intruder went. Even with a helicopter, that can mean searching many miles of terrain, and people can be very good at hiding.
What he really wanted to see was an array of sensors stretching back several miles from the border. That way, not only is the initial intrusion detected, but other sensors eventually are triggered to show which direction the intruder is heading. Such sensors can include electro-optical devices, infrared cameras, radar, ground vibration measurements, and more. Such sensor arrays can be solar powered to allow for installation anywhere.
Connections can be made in a few different ways, including small cell wireless points of presence or via wireless mesh networks. In this type of network, the connection is spread out over multiple (sometimes up to hundreds) of wireless mesh nodes that "talk" to each other to share the network connection. The individual nodes are radio transmitters that function like Wi-Fi routers. They include software controls with rules on how to interact both with other controllers and with the larger network.
Data packets travel by hopping wirelessly from node to node. Dynamic routing allows the nodes to choose the most logical path based on traffic. Thus, even if someone destroys a sensor or a router, the packets are re-routed and the information gets through.
The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol already has a similar effort underway. It's called the Integrated Fixed Towers Program. The agency told Congress last year that a pilot program showed the initial installed towers met their operational requirements and the program was ready to progress.
In sparsely populated areas, these towers seem to make more sense than a physical wall.
Rural Areas Are the "Long Tail "of Border Crossings
Border walls can and do have an effect in high-traffic areas. But running a wall for the full length of the U.S. - Mexico border can never be physically effective nor cost effective. Here's why.
A physical wall does nothing to address things like makeshift ladders, tunnels or even old airplanes that are abandoned after quick one-way trips.
There are about 21,000 border agents to protect roughly 1,954 miles of border. Assuming each has an 8 hour shift and a 40 hour week, that leaves (in theory) one on-duty agent for every few miles or so. But because more agents are assigned to high-traffic crossings, and because of vacations, sick days etc. the actually gaps between agents out in the countryside can be 40 miles or more.
Just as marketers need to get creative to address the long tail of a group of consumers, the federal government needs to get creative when addressing the long tail of rural borders, where there are many miles to cover and where potential border crossers are very spread out.
There are already about 650 miles of walls along the southern U.S. border. So far the cost has reached roughly $7 billion. Thus we are looking at at least $14 billion more to complete a full wall. (An MIT Technology Review article placed the estimate closer to $40 billion.) That's a lot to spend on an effort that might slow, but certainly not stop illegal border crossings.
There's also one last big hurdle - much of the land where a fence would need to be built is privately owned. There would be many legal issues if land owners don't want a fence in their backyard. But sensor arrays can be stretched out and placed creatively to avoid these issues.
In reality, any border in any country can best be protected by using walls in some areas, fences in others, and a lot of electronics focused on the vast stretches of land located in rural areas. In the U.S., a budget of $14 billion to $40 billion can go a lot farther when it's targeted at sensors, cameras and networks instead of steel and concrete. But, most important, an electronic approach actually solves the problem of determining which direction an intruder is heading.
Since border patrol agents themselves say that's what they really need, this approach certainly should be a big part of the wall discussion. | <urn:uuid:72a2b6dd-e5c5-4570-940c-3b1f8bc5e384> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://idc-community.com/government/smart_government/the_most_effective_border_wall_is_electronic_not_concrete_or_steel | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501174215.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104614-00129-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962728 | 1,081 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Set wide characters in memory
#include <wchar.h> wchar_t * wmemset( wchar_t * ws, wchar_t wc, size_t n );
- A pointer to the memory that you want to set.
- The value that you want to store in each wide character.
- The number of wide characters to set.
Use the -l c option to qcc to link against this library. This library is usually included automatically.
The memset() function fills n wide characters starting at ws with the value wc.
The wmemset() function is locale-independent and treats all wchar_t values identically, even if they're null or invalid wide characters.
A pointer to the destination buffer (i.e. the same pointer as ws).
Last modified: 2014-06-24 | <urn:uuid:249703ec-1486-4495-85fa-be8ee34ca34e> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://developer.blackberry.com/native/reference/core/com.qnx.doc.neutrino.lib_ref/topic/w/wmemset.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171706.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00601-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.745963 | 183 | 2.78125 | 3 |
New program could foil hackers in the cloud
This year’s Black Hat Briefings get underway in Las Vegas in a few days, and GCN’s Bill Jackson will be there to chronicle the latest trends in hacking and cyber defense. In the meantime, here is a little hacking nightmare to wet your whistle.
Apparently, hackers have started to experiment with ways to exploit the cloud as a platform for their nefarious deeds. The MIT News explains how this works:
Imagine there are 100 computers attached to a cloud server. Each computer may be running normal programs such as word processors, data analysis tools or almost anything else common to office tasks. But one computer could be simply executing programs that allows it to spy on the other 99. Each time one of the 99 target computers does something, it gives the rogue system more of a chance to capture personal data. It's like a fly on the wall of the cloud. Given how many government agencies are jumping into the cloud, which is often outside their direct control, this is a troubling trend. You may simply not know who your neighbors are in the cloud, and they could be up to no good.
Some cloud providers have begun to encrypt their data, so that everything in transit and within the cloud is protected. So that makes it all safe, right? Not so fast, says MIT once again, as the pattern and timing of save and transmit functions can reveal a lot of personal information even with encrypted data. So long as your system is performing normally, a lot can be inferred by programs that know what patterns to search. And systems connected to the cloud tend to transmit a lot because programs aren't stored locally. A fly in the cloud ointment can again ruin everything in terms of security.
Keeping snoopers from figuring out what their government neighbors are up to requires that computers in the cloud mix in random functions along with all the real data they are processing and sending. MIT graduate students Ling Ren, Xiangyao Yu and Christopher Fletcher, and research scientist Marten van Dijk came up with a program called Ascend that does just that.
Ascend basically randomizes every address and node within a cloud. When data is sent to a node, it is also randomly sent to at least one other node, as sort of a cloud-based decoy. Someone trying to snoop the entire cloud would have a nearly impossible task trying to connect the dots between in-cloud connections and real-world systems commanding the data.
Timing attacks are also an increasing concern. The MIT scientists explain that a timing attack works when, in their example, the police are comparing a surveillance photo of a suspect to random photos on the Web. The surveillance photo is likely going to be encrypted, but the Web photos aren’t protected. By seeing how long it takes the cloud to compute each public photo, inferences about the encrypted data can be guessed. If the cloud computer takes a longer time with certain photos, then it's likely that they are similar to the encrypted on one and require more time to check out. Ascend compensates for this by sending random requests to memory even if nothing is needed. Apparently, all these dummy requests are optimized so that the entire cloud isn't bogged down by fake data.
Ascend is still being worked on, but the dangers in the cloud are likely real. If researchers at MIT can figure out ways to protect the cloud, you can bet quite a few bad guys also know of the vulnerabilities, and may already be spying right now. I'm sure we’ll hear of other nightmare scenarios from Black Hat, but stuff like this should already be keeping agency security folks from sleeping too soundly.
Posted on Jul 26, 2013 at 7:50 AM | <urn:uuid:6ac5b7be-7d2e-432c-bb4e-cc7ed7f803c6> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://gcn.com/blogs/emerging-tech/2013/07/black-hat-hacking-clouds.aspx | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171706.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00601-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956596 | 762 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Ten years ago, the mechanics of congressional and legislative redistricting in most states was largely a manual process. The software of the period was cumbersome, difficult, expensive and carried a steep learning curve.
Todays redistricting tools are something entirely different. Designed primarily by makers of geographic information systems, they allow users to quickly analyze an enormous range of demographic information, voting records and other aggregate data. Incumbents can watch as a boundary line is moved this way or that and immediately see the changes in population, the ethnic and racial mix of a particular block, whether a precinct or neighborhood is being split, where minority/majority blocks can be created and which party is likely to gain or lose seats in Congress or in the state assembly. In fact, todays redistricting tools can spit out plans, maps and boundary options faster than anyone is capable of absorbing.
The new technology may make redistricting a faster, more open process. Tools that can quickly and accurately analyze and map the Census Bureaus TIGER 2000 files and P.L. 94-171 demographic fields may help produce plans that not only stand up in court, but reduce the number of legal challenges that dogged 41 of the 50 states after redistricting plans were enacted in 1992.
What affect the new technology will have on the actual political process of redrawing congressional and legislative boundaries depends as much on the legislatures approach as on the incumbents involved in the process. Minnesotas Hennipin County Commissioner Randy Johnson described redistricting as an almost life-and-death issue to many politicians. How congressional and legislative lines are redrawn can determine who will get elected or not elected over an entire decade. "In the scramble for political survival everybody is looking to rely on somebody else to make sure they dont get shafted in the process." Johnson said. Under these circumstances, partisan infighting and incumbency protection can quickly overshadow demographic concerns and community interests.
Minnesota is one of the most progressive states when it comes to utilizing software in redistricting efforts. In Minnesota, Republicans control the House, the Democratic-Farm-Labor (DFL) Party has a majority in the Senate, and the governor is a member of the Independence Party. Although the Minnesota Legislature has yet to agree on principles for redrawing congressional and legislative boundaries, the new technology reportedly has several advantages and very little downside. In addition to speed and convenience, advantages include openness, increased accuracy of demographic analysis, and the ability to support redistricting standards that are more likely to stand up in court.
So far, the technology appears to have had little effect on the partisan nature of the redistricting process. Republican and DFL caucuses in both the Senate and the House each draw up a redistricting plan, four in all, along with the principles and guidelines used in drafting them. Each caucus has a team of hired GIS/redistricting technicians. Each has the same redistricting software, printers, plotters, monitors and workstations all other caucuses use. Completed redistricting plans and principles worked out by the different caucuses are sent as bills to the nonpartisan Legislative GIS Office, where they are processed into a standardized format with maps, reports and statistics for each district. The bills are then made available to conference committees and floor sessions, and at the same time put on the Web for public access. Anyone can download them, look at the interactive maps and use the data to put together their own plans, including those by counties and cities.
Lee Meilleur, director of the Legislative GIS Office, said Minnesota regularly uses ESRI software, but this year the legislature, GIS office and counties are all using Maptitude for Redistricting from Caliper Corp. "We cant produce the quality of maps with Maptitude that we can with ArcInfo, but redistricting is more or less a data-crunching and plan-making process," Meilleur said. "Maptitude is more flexible and provides more of what we need."
Maptitude was particularly helpful during the period when the four caucuses were meeting almost constantly and submitting bills. Troy Lawrence, assistant director of the GIS office, said that over a four-day period toward the end of May, the GIS office worked almost around the clock processing plans, turning out maps, preparing for hearings, etc.
As of June, all redistricting bills had been through the committee process, were past the floor and were in the conference phase, where conferees were trying to reconcile differences between the House and Senate principles. If consensus is reached, plans will still have to meet the technical requirements of law, be approved and signed by the governor and, finally, stand up to court challenges. Peter Wattson, chief council for the Minnesota Senate, said conferees may work through summer and fall until they have a plan. At that time the governor can call a special session of the legislature to enact it. If they dont produce a plan by March 19, 2002, the courts will step in.
Affecting the Political Process
Apart from the political process of redrawing congressional and legislative boundaries, Wattson said the software does make a difference. "The technology made it easier to get districts of equal population. Its made it possible to reduce population deviations," he said. "Also, the technology may make it easier to keep track of cities and counties that have been split, even reduce the number of splits. The standard reports we were able to produce with the plans make splitting, compacting, the partisan character of districts and the populations so easy to see -- they just jump right out at you."
"The ability to download a plan, analyze it and run it against another plan or index that another organization has come up with makes it more difficult to disguise political gamesmanship [such as splitting or compacting]," said Michael Brodkorp, redistricting specialist for the Minnesota Senate Republican Caucus. "The technology lets you see immediately where and how changes have been made."
"The new software has made the redistricting process easier for some people to explore many alternatives quickly, " Johnson said. "After the next decennial census, it will be sophisticated enough and simple enough that large numbers of people who want to use it and get involved in the process will be able to."
In Minnesota, the new software has shown a potential for making redistricting a much more open process, making legislators more accountable to the public, and helping ensure that demographic concerns are not overshadowed by partisan interests or incumbency protection. Will the technology reduce delays caused by partisan disputes and long, drawn-out debates? Maybe not this time, but then redistricting tools will be even cleverer next time around. | <urn:uuid:70f00bc9-4188-4100-9ea5-fecc3d78aa86> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.govtech.com/magazines/gt/Drawing-Better-Boundaries.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501172017.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104612-00125-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960309 | 1,360 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Since 1982, 37,000 people, including 7,000 Americans, survived potentially disastrous incidents because of the COSPAS-SARSAT rescue network. That record earned the satellite system an induction into the Space Technology Hall of Fame today.
The honor recognizes technologies originally developed for space applications that ultimately improve live on Earth, and few technologies rival COSPAS-SARSAT in life-preserving metrics.
In 2013 alone, COSPAS-SARSAT’s network of satellites that detect and locate distress signals from emergency beacons led to the rescue of 253 people from potentially deadly situations. The network involves numerous satellites, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s geostationary and polar-orbiting satellites. Altogether the program comprises 43 countries and organizations.
“The technology on NOAA satellites is not just for gathering environmental intelligence and weather forecasting, it also saves lives thanks to our role with COSPAS-SARSAT,” said Mary Kicza, assistant administrator for NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service.
The United States, Canada, France and the Soviet Union teamed up together in 1979 to for COSPAS-SARSAT. Notably, the project was able to survive political divisiveness during the Cold War in the 1980s to continue to grow. Hundreds of thousands of aircraft, ships and other off-terrain vehicles are now outfitted with emergency beacons that, when activated, set into motion a chain of events that ultimately ensure emergency rescues can take place.
“It is an honor for COSPAS-SARSAT to receive this prestigious distinction. It is high praise, not only for the creators of the technology and the team of scientists and technicians behind the scenes, but the brave first responders, who make the rescues,” said Chris O’Connors, program manager for NOAA SARSAT. | <urn:uuid:7da6d975-5e44-46a4-a106-ee87bcac99f6> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.nextgov.com/cloud-computing/2014/05/satellite-rescue-network-gets-space-technology-hall-fame-recognition/85174/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501173405.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104613-00301-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92011 | 388 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Telemedicine holds much promise for the healthcare industry, but also many challenges. Innovation continues to push the field forward though — most recently with two studies focused on the application and effects of the use of robotics in imaging.
Study 1: Imaging Across The Atlantic
A robotic arm, directed by Dr. Partho Sengupta (director of cardiac ultrasound research at the Icahn School and chairman of the New Technology Task Force at the American Society of Echocardiography) was outfitted with ultrasound technology, and used to examine the carotid artery of a patient located in Boston. Dr. Sengupta was located in Germany at the time of the procedure, and performed the ultrasound on his personal computer, over a low-bandwidth connection. The procedure took four minutes, according to Healthcare IT News.
According to Dr. Sengupta, “This feasibility and time-efficiency of long-distance, telerobotic ultrasound may help expand the role of imagers to care for patients online virtually lending a true ‘helping hand’ remotely and providing a patient’s care team expert guidance. Our first-in-man experiment shows long-distance, telerobotic ultrasound examinations over standard Internet are possible. Our successful experiment opens up a new frontier for the use of remote, robotic ultrasound imaging that could potentially be more efficient and cost-effective overall for healthcare access and delivery.”
Study 2: Remote Echocardiograms
The second study, according to a press release from Mt. Sinai, compared the results of robot-treated patients to traditionally treated counterparts. Patients in the test group received remote consultation and an exam using a robotic echocardiogram on the day of their visit to their local primary healthcare center, located over 100 miles away from the hospital. The control group received treatment at Mt. Sinai.
The results found that diagnostic process time was reduced from 114 days to 27 days for patients receiving remote consultation. Additionally, the patient wait time for obtaining a specialist consultation was cut from 86 days, to 12, with 95 percent of the remote group claiming their experience to be a superior strategy.
On-demand, virtual robotic ultrasound has many potential applications, ranging from timely, in-hospital or ED patient imaging studies, to community screenings, or even dangerous locations like war zones.
These advancements in the use of robotics are widely seen as the next step in the development of telemedine and telehealth. | <urn:uuid:d3f4a5c1-44c3-43d2-9bc8-4143fd312d6e> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.bsminfo.com/doc/how-robotic-imaging-can-advance-telehealth-0001 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170253.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00417-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952867 | 501 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Pixels per foot / Pixels per meter is the most fundamental and valuable, though imperfect, metric for specifying video surveillance image quality.
In a single number, this metric (e.g., 10ppf, 40ppf, 100ppf) conveys important information about what the projected quality that a camera can provide.
The image below, taken from our Camera Calculator, demonstrates examples of common pixel per foot (ppf) levels:
PPF Established Metric
PPF has become a critical established metric for several reasons:
Broad camera manufacturer support: Most major manufacturers use this metric.
Common A&E specifications: Architects and engineers who plan large projects regularly use PPF / PPM as the basis for their designs and surveillance plans.
Need for Something: With so many resolution options today (from 1MP to 12MP and beyond), the old metrics which used percentage of screen covered make no sense. PPF has filled this void.
The Goal of PPF
PPF is a single metric (e.g., 10, 50, 90, etc.) that when specified should deliver a specific level of quality. For example, the parking lot camera must deliver 50 PPF. Instead of guessing or just specifying more resolution, using this metric should enable selection of the ‘right’ resolution for the scene. The final image, following the PPF metric, will then deliver a predictable level of quality.
Alas, PPF suffers from many problems that must be factored in:
- Assumes even lighting and ignores the impact of bright sunlight
- Assumes day time lighting and ignores the impact of night time / low light viewing
- Disregards differences in lenses and compression
- Disregards that image quality needs are subjective and debatable
- Fails to specify related and critical metrics to complement PPF
Despite this, PPF does have value for estimation and planning. It just cannot be used blindly or simplistically. Inside the PRO Member’s section, we explain:
- How to calculate PPF
- How to recognize PPF limitations and make adjustments
- How to best use PPF productively | <urn:uuid:fd5d7928-8ab6-42bf-b493-6515e9fb7364> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://ipvm.com/reports/definitive-guide-ppf | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170614.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00593-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.877755 | 442 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Watchers of the SSL industry follow SSL protocol attacks such as BEAST, CRIME, Lucky 13 and RC4 closely. They also track the rare certification authority (CA) attacks such as Comodo or DigiNotar. But they don’t seem to spend much time following attacks to the domain name registration system (DNS).
Websites are being attacked everyday through the DNS. Just recently, the Syrian Electronic Army attacked the New York Times and others. This attack could also lead to the mis-issuance of some types of publicly trusted SSL certificates.
The DNS Registrars operate a low-margin business with no third-party oversight. No over-sight results in less emphasis on the design and maintenance of controls.
Registrars are the authorities for assigning domain names to registrants by binding the name to physical resources that are under the registrant’s control. This binding is often relied upon in the issuance of domain-validated (DV) certificates. In some instances of the verification procedure for domain control, email confirmation is relied upon, using the email address listed in the registry.
Domain registrants commonly authenticate to their DNS accounts using only a username and password. So, an attacker can easily compromise a registrant’s DNS account and divert their Web, email and other traffic wherever they wish. In doing so, the attacker is able to provide the confirming response to the domain verification email and thereby request and receive an SSL certificate for the victim’s domain name.
Digital certificates are supposed to offer a level of assurance over and above that offered by the domain name system. For this reason, the browsers give webpages with a certificate a special user interface, indicating higher assurance in the contents of the address bar. But when the certificate issuance process relies solely on the contents of the DNS, that higher assurance is an illusion. This being the case, why is domain verification allowed to depend only on the registry?
The same can be said about DANE, since DNSSec assigns keys to registrants as a byproduct of the DNS binding, hence DNSSec is only as secure as the registrar’s procedures.
Industry experts should consider the security ramifications of validating domain control only using the Registrar data. | <urn:uuid:1debc952-7aab-4dde-932c-e2ec6f5741f6> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.entrust.com/dns-registrar-vulnerabilities/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170614.88/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00593-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924157 | 467 | 2.6875 | 3 |
ZIFFPAGE TITLEDigging DeeperBy Mel Duvall | Posted 2005-04-06 Email Print
How does Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan decide to raise rates a quarter point? By analyzing a potent mixture of raw pecuniary data and computerized economic intelligence against first-hand reports from key hubs of U.S. financial activity and five
Previous Fed chairmen, such as Greenspan's predecessor, Paul Volcker, had been primarily interested in aggregated metrics like the Consumer Price Index. That is a monthly measure of the change in prices urban shoppers pay for a fixed set of goods and services, including department store products and apartment rents.
But Greenspan thinks differently. When he arrived, economists started getting more requests from the chairman's office for disaggregated dataindividual points of information like the price of hot-rolled steel, construction-grade plywood or circuit boards.
Greenspan wants such data points to seek out telling shifts in the U.S. economy that large aggregated figures like the GDP sometimes disguise. A significant drop in demand for steel, for example, might not be noticed because it could be masked by increases in demand for non-steel-based products like furniture, clothing and shoes. But a dip in steel consumption may indicate that manufacturers of cars, dishwashers, microwaves and freezers are girding for a drop in demand for their products.
Wal-Mart does something similar, drilling down to compare, for example, sales of lightweight spin-casting fishing rods to determine subtle shifts in consumer tastes, perhaps brought on by a Hollywood movie such as A River Runs Through It, about fly-fishing in Montana. That might be invisible looking only at total sales of fishing rods.
For Greenspan, the summer of 1996 was spent studying U.S. productivity data. He was perplexed by figures showing a steady drop in productivity, or the output per hour of a worker.
The data didn't make sense next to his anecdotal evidence. His staff's ground reports and his own industry contacts indicated that new technology was helping companies dramatically boost productivity.
Greenspan had the Fed's economists conduct a massive research project, calculating the change in productivity in every major sector, from manufacturing to mining, finance, agriculture, education, health care and services. They found a number of flaws in how productivity was measured, particularly in service businesses such as insurance, law and banking, where technology had made a tremendous impact.
Automated teller machines, for example, let banks serve more customers faster. But because the main service they offeredmoney withdrawalswas largely provided for free, the benefits were not being recognized. The traditional productivity stat measures the amount of output in dollars that comes from an hour of labor. Because there was no output or income generated by these machines, there was no recognition of the increase in productivity banks achieved.
The research led Greenspan to conclude that productivity gains in the service industries were at least as high as, and probably higher than, the 3.6% average annual gains recorded in the manufacturing sector between 1994 and 1997, even though the data did not show it. That compared to average gains of 1% to 1.5% in the previous two decades.
As a result, Greenspan decided not to raise interest rates, even though many of his colleagues pressed for increases. Based on history, they feared, inflation would jump if interest rates did not slow down the economy. Instead, Greenspan theorized that gains in productivity would prevent prices from risingan informed hunch that the data would later prove correct.
"I was on the opposite side of the chairman in that debate," Meyer says. "But he was right. He deserves the credit for figuring it out."
Greenspan goes through a similar process of checking incoming data against insights gathered from the field before each Federal Open Market Committee meeting.
In the weeks leading up to the Feb. 1 gathering, economists with the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank placed a number of calls to executives with the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports and at local shipping companies.
The ports, which combined are the nation's busiest, had been plagued by delays in the months leading up to Christmas. The concern for Greenspan was whether those delays would have trickle-down effects. Manufacturers might be waiting on parts and retailers might not be able to restock shelves, which might in turn mean consumers would hold off opening their wallets until those big-screen TVs arrived in stores.
The ports went through their own version of the perfect storm: A surge of new production from China of everything from toys to consumer electronics, and parts for larger products like computers, had the ports working at full capacity in the summer months. Then, heading into the fall, a sharp increase of imports from retailers like Wal-Mart and Target, whose fine-tuned supply chains have stores receiving merchandise just in time to be placed on shelves for Christmas, pushed the infrastructure and workforce past their limits.
Normally a ship arrives at a scheduled time, pulls into an open dock and is unloaded in three to four days. In late October, ships were often waiting more than six days to dock, then taking more than 10 days to unload because of a shortage of longshoremen, cranes and trains.
At its worst, as many as 86 ships were lined up offshore to be unloaded at the two ports. The result was a seaside traffic jam. "It was unbelievable," says David Arian, president of Local 13 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. "There was an armada of ships out in the harbor waiting to be unloaded."
Not only were the ports overwhelmed, the rail lines couldn't move containers from the ships fast enough. Union Pacific was left understaffed when an unexpectedly large number of employees accepted an early retirement plan.
Months might pass before the effects of this type of logjam would show up in national statistics like the GDP, retail sales or inventory figures. But near-real-time anecdotal reports from economists with the San Francisco reserve bank kept Greenspan informed.
"What we look for is major developments in our regions that may have national implications," says Fred Furlong, vice president of financial and regional research for the San Francisco Fed, whose region encompasses California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Hawaii and Alaska.
"Our position [as an arm of Greenspan] provides us with access to a large number of people on the ground with first-hand access to what's going on with the economy," he adds.
Prior to each open market committee meeting, San Francisco economists make close to 100 calls to key contacts, such as chief executives, finance officers and controllers with major employers in the region, such as Boeing, Intel, Union Pacific and the ports. Other reserve banks do the same.
Similarly, Wal-Mart's employee-led program to collect eyewitness intelligence on rivals' sales helped clinch its decision to slash prices before Christmas.
What Furlong's team found right before the February meeting was that the worst was over. Two thousand full-time and 7,000 part-time longshoremen had signed on to help the existing 5,000. Union Pacific had hired 4,000 workers, eliminating most of its staffing bottlenecks.
The message San Francisco Fed president Yellen delivered to Greenspan was that port delays were no longer an immediate threat to the economy. | <urn:uuid:34ae4d12-0442-45d4-9c57-92d994711712> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Projects-Data-Analysis/Inside-the-Mind-of-Alan-Greenspan/3 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171163.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00293-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968813 | 1,517 | 2.53125 | 3 |
An IP address (Internet Protocol address) is actually a numerical tag that is assigned to each participating device over the network either a computer or a printer. These devices are attached via networking using internet protocols for their communication.
Two main functions of an IP address are given under:
- Identifying a host or a network interface
- allocating addresses | <urn:uuid:625866d0-4f8c-4e63-9252-af1f98b597da> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://howdoesinternetwork.com/tag/server | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171608.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00469-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.893938 | 70 | 3.609375 | 4 |
What is Ransomware? It’s a malware attack and that encrypts the specified files in your computer and mapped drives ! How is Ransomware getting spread? The most common way is via mail attachment. Specific file types in your network drives and local computer will get encrypted when you open the Ransomware attachment from your mail. What is the impact of Ransomware? You won’t be able to access the files which are encrypted. Think about this from an enterprise perspective – most of our machines have at least couple of network drives/file shares access and these file shares are mapped to you machine. All those files (with specific file types) will get encrypted and to decrypt those files you need to pay ransom money to hackers!! These kind of attacks are increasing day by day !
Altaro is organizing a Webinar to explain what is ransomware? How to prevent this from happening on your Hyper-V file servers? What are the methods to recover impacted Hyper-V hosts (file servers) from Ransomware? And real-world infections and resolutions (and failures!). Free webinar is scheduled for 23rd Aug 2016 2PM CEST / 1PM BST (RoW) OR 10AM PDT / 1PM EDT (US). | <urn:uuid:b170a0de-3c74-4212-89c5-6b84661385c9> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.anoopcnair.com/what-is-ransomware-and-attend-webinar-to-know-more-about-it/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501172077.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104612-00169-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940465 | 254 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Cloud computing has become completely ubiquitous, spawning hundreds of new web based services, platforms for building applications, and new types of businesses and companies. However, the freedom, fluidity and dynamic platform that cloud computing provides also makes it particularly vulnerable to cyber attacks. And because the cloud is a shared infrastructure, the consequences of such attacks can be extremely serious.
With funding from DARPA, researchers from the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) aim to develop a new system that would help the cloud identify and recover from an attack almost instantaneously.
Typically, cyber attacks force the shutdown of the entire infiltrated system, regardless of whether the attack is on a personal computer, a business website or an entire network. While the shutdown prevents the virus from spreading, it effectively disables the underlying infrastructure until cleanup is complete.
Professor Martin Rinard, a principal investigator at CSAIL and leader of the Cloud Intrusion Detection and Repair project, and his team of researchers aim to develop a smart, self-healing cloud computing infrastructure that would be able to identify the nature of an attack and then, essentially, fix itself.
The scope of their work is based on examining the normal operations of the cloud to create guidelines for how it should look and function, then drawing upon this model so that the cloud can identify when an attack is underway and return to normal as quickly as possible.
“Much like the human body has a monitoring system that can detect when everything is running normally, our hypothesis is that a successful attack appears as an anomaly in the normal operating activity of the system,” said Rinard. “By observing the execution of a “normal’ cloud system we’re going to the heart of what we want to preserve about the system, which should hopefully keep the cloud safe from attack.”
Rinard believes that a major problem with today’s cloud computing infrastructures is the lack of a thorough understanding of how they operate. His research aims to identify systemic effects of different behavior on cloud computing systems for clues about how to prevent future attacks.
“Our goal is to observe and understand the normal operation of the cloud, then when something out of the ordinary happens, take actions that steer the cloud back into its normal operating mode,” said Rinard. “Our expectation is that if we can do this, the cloud will survive the attack and keep operating without a problem.” | <urn:uuid:86af59c3-f47a-45cc-8dad-020fa1a5f5b6> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2012/02/28/researchers-work-on-self-healing-cloud-infrastructure/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501173872.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104613-00345-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950038 | 501 | 3.421875 | 3 |
As seems to be my want at the moment, today I have another disaster-oriented column for you.
Remember the recent meteor event in Russia? On February 15 this year a rock estimated to be 50 meters wide and weighing an estimated 10,000 tons entered the atmosphere over the city of Chelyabinsk at a speed of around 40,000 mph and exploded.
The shock wave was estimated as having the power of 50 kilotons of TNT and injured about 1,500 people. It also rather pointedly raised the question of how well prepared are we for dealing with meteors. The answer is that we really aren't capable of doing much at all (although we have lots of ideas that probably aren't practical).
For a start, we really don't know what's out there. While there are some pretty impressive programs for finding and identifying asteroids, for example, NASA's Near Earth Object Program, none are funded nearly well enough given that these chucks of rock could cause immense damage to our planet up to and including wiping out life on earth.
While forewarned can be forearmed, when it comes to asteroids even if we knew that some piece of space debris was heading our way other than trying to evacuate people in its path (imagine trying to get people out of New York or, worse still, Mumbai) the current reality is that we'd be pretty much out of luck.
To get a better handle on the degree of risk we face from meteors it's worth looking back to see how what kind of (if you'll excuse the pun) impact they've have had on the earth in the past. A new mashup using data on known significant meteor strikes over the last 100 years does just that. Fireball from Outer Space by Sebastian Sadowski plots 606 eye-witnessed events worldwide which you can filter by country and date.
The Fireball historical meteor strike visualization
The biggest meteors over the whole time period covered by Fireball are Sikhote-Alin, 23 metric tons (Russia, 1947), Jilin, 4 metric tons (China, 1976), Allende, 2 metric tons (Mexico, 1969), and Norton County, 1.1 metric tons (United States, 1948). But none of those compare to the 1908 Tunguska event which was not witnessed by anyone as it occurred near the desolate Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia.
The reason we know about Tunguska event is due to the incredible damage it caused (770 square miles of forest was flattened) and it's estimated that the blast was equivalent to between 10 and 15 megatons of TNT (that's about 40 percent of the blast of the Tsar Bomba I discussed in my recent post What would a nuclear blast do to my town? concerning another mashup that simulates nuclear bomb explosions).
The aftermath of the Tunguska event
Another excellent meteor visualization is 500 Years of Witnessed Meteors by Adam Pearce. As it's name suggests it covers 5 centuries of observed meteor strikes. This interactive presentation actually has photos of the meteors (or fragments thereof).
500 Years of Witnessed Meteors visualization
Fireball and 500 Years of Witnessed Meteors are beautiful pieces of work that were created as entries to visualizing.org's Visualizing Metorites competition and the actual winner of the competition was Macrometeorites by Roxana Torre.
Macrometeorites is stunning and it's timeline animation is way cool. Keep in mind is that the visualization starts from 1399 so the apprent speed up of witnessed meteor events is due to better communications and a growing population and not that the rate of meteor strikes increased.
After playing with these visualization you might conclude that meteor strikes of any significant size are pretty rare events (from a total of more than 45,700 recorded meteorite landings only around 3,800 have a mass larger than 1kg) and you'd be right as long as you're talking about those that are are actually witnessed by people.
If you take a more realistic view you'll realize that there are huge tracts of the earth's land where nobody lives (depending on who you believe that's roughly 90% of the planet) so the apparent clustering you'll note is undoubtedly related to population density. So, let's assume that because of clustering something like 50% of impacts are not witnessed ... that makes the total of significant strikes for the last century around 1,200. But wait ...
There's also the oceans where impacts undoubtedly happen with equal frequency to land events. Given that oceans are 70% of the earth's surface. It would seem reasonable that there were as many events at sea as there were on land over the last hundred years making the real total at least 4,000 significant events. The risk of significant meteor impact events may be much higher than is generally appreciated. | <urn:uuid:34ddb183-484c-4853-980f-1670f4709e7a> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.networkworld.com/article/2225072/security/is-it-a-bird--is-it-a-plane--no--it-s-a-huge---------meteor-.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171166.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00641-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966212 | 1,012 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Unfortunately, Green House Data does not have a wind turbine built into our data center roof. We wish we did, but because it is impossible to separate renewable power from conventional methods of generation on the power grid, we have to buy Renewable Energy Credits instead. This is combined with purchases from Cheyenne wind farms to help us reach our 100% renewable-powered goal. In fact, most companies who use renewable energy purchase renewable credits, including huge operators like Google.
So what are Renewable Energy Credits (RECs)? Everyone plugs into the same power grid—there is no separate plug marked "Wind Power" in our data center! That means it's impossible to tell whether the energy used is generated by a solar panel or by a coal plant, once it makes it to the outlet. A Renewable Energy Credit, sometimes called a green tag, is a certificate proving that 1 megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity was generated by a renewable energy resource.
RECs can be sold, traded, or bartered according to the US Department of Energy, and are sold separately from the energy itself. That means we have to buy it directly from companies specializing in renewable projects. They can be controversial because the buyer of an REC is basically investing in another renewable project, not buying renewable energy themselves.
RECs help encourage renewable growth when direct purchases aren't available and are relatively new commodities, so the potential for fraud must be considered. How can companies be sure their money is going towards the development of new renewables? Who keeps track of the certificates themselves to ensure they aren't sold twice?
Every REC must be tracked from their origin to the final user, making sure that each megawatt-hour of renewable energy has indeed entered the regular power grid. The EPA suggests two methods of certification: individual audits and regional certificate tracking systems. Audits are certified by third-party organizations and are generally used when the REC is purchased in a far away region. Tracking systems are electronic databases used to monitor RECs, with unique numbered certificates for every MWh of electricity. Once the wattage has been used, the certificate expires. Each certificate number can only belong to a single account.
There are a number of certificate tracking systems in use throughout the United States. In the Rocky Mountains, the Western Renewable Energy Generation Information System (WREGIS) tracks renewable energy generation from units that register in the system by using verifiable data and creating RECs for this generation. WREGIS is an independent organization governed by committee, and was developed after California charged that state’s Energy Commission with developing a tracking system in 2003.
In Green House Data's case, we know that some of our data center power comes from the Happy Jack and Silver Sage Wind Farms, and one of the reasons we choose to locate in Wyoming is because of the abundance of renewable energy fed into the regular power grid. At our New Jersey location, we also have some direct solar power generated by solar panels on the roof of the data center building, but we must also supplement this power with RECs. Every year we receive a certificate verifying our RECs as a total MWh amount, which then expires when we have used that amount of electricity.
Green House Data has also been an EPA Green Power partner with 100% Green Power usage for several years. In order to meet the requirements, an organization must track their electricity usage and purchase a corresponding amount of RECs, so their power is essentially supplied by renewable sources. The EPA also requires power to be sourced from the United States, as well as from renewable facilities built within the past 15 years, in order to continuously drive the creation of more renewables.
RECs come from a certain "vintage", meaning they are certified for renewable project spending within a calendar year. If we purchase an REC for 2013, that money is spent during 2013 to build more renewable energy sources. The EPA Green Power partner program requires participants to purchase RECs of the current vintage, or up to 3 months ahead of time. Organizations can purchase vintages ahead of time, but they will not count towards a 100% Green Power rating until that year has started.
RECs are only one way Green House Data strives to set an example as a leading provider of responsible cloud computing services. For more information, check out our energy efficient practices.
Posted By: Joe Kozlowicz | <urn:uuid:bf4d3ff3-cc20-49e4-8004-9f2c03b107f4> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.greenhousedata.com/blog/wait-you-dont-have-your-own-turbines | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170434.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00157-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954439 | 888 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Last week’s fatal shootings of two black men and several Dallas police officers are causing many Americans (and others) to ponder racism, extremism and violence in ways they have not before. Today, we have the technology and ability to watch the heartbreaking and terrifying footage of Alton Sterling being shot all over the internet. Thus, our young people, children and students have access to this media as well.
Although technology does a lot of good for us, having access to violent materials online is not a benefit for young, formative minds. Racist ideologies and extremist views are said to form at an early age. Social media and the internet make it easy for young people to witness violence online. Because of this, it’s of extreme importance for schools, parents and communities to educate and safeguard students from harmful messages and materials — not just physically, but also on school technology, which is becoming the most prevalent pathway for student communication.
Students face a multitude of risks on the internet today.
The following statistics paint the picture of the dangers students face today:
It’s everyone’s responsibility to intervene with these dangers and risks.
These startling statistics clearly show that American youths are subject to a multitude of dangerous issues and risks. They encounter them predominantly while on the internet and social media. To combat and address these factors, educators and parents must find ways to educate youth on them. Some parents might allow their children to roam the internet freely as long as they have a rule that the child must discuss and ask questions about anything troubling they’ve seen, for example. Schools must have measures in place in which to detect, address and intervene when students are at risk online.
Online monitoring software can help eliminate risks, educate students, and keep them safe
Impero Education Pro internet safety software can help parents and educators alike keep children safe and informed on the violent or disturbing materials on the internet. Impero Education Pro’s monitoring software monitors students’ online activity, which helps schools detect issues, spot patterns in online behavior and intervene appropriately. Not only can monitoring detect threats of racial bullying, but it can also flag issues such as extremism and radicalization, LGBT derogatory language, suicide, weapons, violence and self-harm. By identifying these issues safeguarding staff can intervene, mentor and — in cases where students are being exposed to racial and religious bias, and/or extremist content — offer vital counter narratives that can educate students on the dangers of these behaviors and ideals.
Impero Education Pro updated online monitoring keyword libraries are available now.
Impero recognizes the importance of student safety and has developed an updated online monitoring keyword library with the help of nonprofit organization experts and school focus groups. These libraries detect and flag an exhaustive list of phrases and definitions in the following categories:
The updated keyword library function is free to existing Education Pro customers by contacting Impero Customer Support Portal for download instructions. New customers receive the full updated keyword library with purchase of Education Pro.
For the full updated keyword library launch press release, click here.
To find out more about how Impero education network management software can help your school with online monitoring, request a free demo and trial on our website. To talk to our team of education experts, call 877.883.4370, or email Impero now to arrange a call back. | <urn:uuid:bfc23762-6098-407b-9aec-10045b90465c> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.imperosoftware.com/promoting-student-safety-online-in-times-of-turmoil-and-trouble/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170993.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00509-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937906 | 681 | 2.953125 | 3 |
A branch of the U.S.'s central bank is forcing a password reset after a cyberattack briefly redirected visitors to parts of its website to bogus Web pages.
The Federal Reserve of St. Louis found on April 24 that DNS (domain name system) settings had been changed to redirect people to fake Web pages. The bank didn't name its DNS provider. Those who visited those pages may have been exposed to malware or had their login credentials stolen.
"If you attempted to log into your user account on that date, it is possible that this malicious group may have accessed your user name and password," an advisory said.
The DNS is a global database that resolves domain names into IP addresses that can be called into a browser. Those who run DNS networks guard them carefully, as modifications can send people to the wrong website.
DNS hacks are powerful since a person can be directed to a different IP address even if they type in the correct domain name.
The bank said the rogue web pages were designed to look like its research website. Other fake web pages were created that mimicked those in the research site, which contains databases of economic information.
Send news tips and comments to email@example.com. Follow me on Twitter: @jeremy_kirk | <urn:uuid:bfeaf907-99e9-40d7-ae3c-dc0ea0875442> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.csoonline.com/article/2924189/cyber-attacks-espionage/st-louis-federal-reserve-forces-password-change-after-dns-attack.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171632.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00209-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975505 | 264 | 2.625 | 3 |
Ergonomics? What's that?
Looking at classic cars, it’s easy to get the impression that, when it came to laying out the dials, switches, and other controls, the engineers and designers of the day simply threw everything at the dashboard and bolted stuff in where it landed. To be fair, they often had many fewer controls and displays to worry about compared to the technology-laden vehicles of today. As you'd expect, much more science goes in to designing the cars of today. Just as aerodynamics is integral when it comes to exterior styling, for interiors the same is true for disciplines like biomechanics, anthropometry, kinesiology, and even various flavors of psychology—all bundled together and known as ergonomics, or human factors.
Those ergonomicists, or human factors engineers, have the job of creating a vehicle’s interior within the framework of industry best practices and Federal (or EU, or Japanese) regulations that lay out crash protection and other requirements, like the kinds of information that must be displayed to the driver. Jennifer Kostrzewa and Lori Kaarlela are human factors experts at GM, and recently they spoke to Ars about the role of ergonomicists in the car design process. Their job involves combining the wants and needs of their customers along with the various design rules and legislative requirements to create all the bits of a car interior that get seen or touched (apart from software like infotainment systems, which are done separately by human machine interface specialists).
It’s an important job, even if it’s failed to attract the same degree of attention as the higher role of sketching and designing a car’s outside bits. While most dyed-in-the-wool car nerds can name a handful of designers, are any of those names responsible for the interiors? That's despite the fact that getting the inside of a car right is arguably more important to the customer. If you spend a couple of hours a day driving, the bits of your car you’ll see and touch (and smell) are going to be the seats and pedals and dash—not the flared wheel arches or aerodynamic side skirts.
Ergonomicists use a variety of tools and methods in the course of their work. Take the humble seat, for example. These days, the front seats in cars are often complex machines in their own right, with electric motors, heating (and even cooling) elements, and integrated airbags. Plus, chairs must be engineered to withstand the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)’s testing requirements. Taking the challenge even further, it’s no good just designing one kind of seat and then using it for every car in the range; people have different expectations and preferences depending on what sort of vehicle it is. An SUV or truck’s seat isn’t going to need the same kind of lateral bolstering as a low-slung sports car, but it probably will require more cushioning, for example.
Chair design all starts with what's known as an H-point. This is the pivot between a person's torso and their thigh, and it's one of the fixed 'hard points' in a car's design (and one that affects how many of the other aspects are laid out, according to crash test regulations). The H-point is relative to other bits of the car. For example, the aforementioned low-slung sports car will have a much smaller distance between the floor and the H-point than an SUV or truck, where the seat is higher up.
On top of that, the seat has to work for people of all shapes and sizes, or at least as many shapes and sizes as possible. Anthropometrics has divided up the population according to percentiles—ones that have shifted a little over the years as people have gotten taller (thanks to better nutrition) and fatter (thanks to over-nutrition). For Chevrolet’s 2014 Impala, getting the seats right involved hundreds of hours of testing by volunteers, ranging from 5th percentile women (5' tall, 110 lbs) to 95th percentile men (6' tall, 240 lbs). Chevy's Human Factors engineers put in a huge amount of work before even the first volunteers got a chance to put bums on seats to provide feedback.
When designing the interior of a new model, GM uses what the company calls a 'spaciousness calculator,' which works out how roomy people perceive the car as being. Next comes the 3D CAVE, a Computer Assisted (or automated) Virtual Environment—a room with rear projection screens for the walls, floor, and ceiling. Designers and engineers can use this to explore their designs in silico. The caves are also large enough that the physical mockups, or bucks, of new designs can fit inside, with the cave simulating the outside environment, to make sure the occupants have sufficient visibility and so on. 3D CAVEs are used widely across the car industry today, given the speed and convenience of being able to re-render a design change. Ford has also been pairing 3D printers with 3D CAVEs to rapidly prototype new bits and pieces.
It's not all 3D printing and virtual reality, though. GM uses a large metal and plastic mannequin called Oscar, spiritually descended from a dummy used in the 1940s to develop ejection seats called Oscar Eightball. GM's Oscar probably hasn't ridden many rocket sleds, but it has helped work out how much head and legroom is needed for most of GM's cars since being patented in 1961. Oscar's head and legs extend from its H-point to replicate different size percentiles, helping GM's engineers arrive at the optimum interior spacing.
And it's not just variation in size and shape that needs to be factored in. Not everyone who buys a car is going to be a sprite and nimble 25-year-old; just as our population—including car buyers—is getting larger, it's also aging. Accessible design needs to take this in to account. Back in 1994, Ford commissioned Sharon Cook, an ergonomicist at Loughborough University in the UK, to research the issue of older drivers' ergonomic needs, and the result was the Third Age Suit.
The Third Age Suit is a series of orthoses (orthopedic braces), gloves, and corsets, as well as goggles that simulate partial vision loss, allowing the wearer to experience what old age is like: restricted movement in the joints and neck, decreased manual dexterity, and impaired vision. By donning the Third Age Suit, Ford's designers are able to experience their creations the way their parents might, in a mere 30 minutes rather than 30 years.
If Ford is letting its human factors engineers travel forward in time, Nissan has been sending its into space. The Japanese car maker, together with researchers at Keio University in Japan, have been working on seats designed to reduce driver fatigue, inspired by the position our bodies adopt in weightlessness. In a conventional seat, most of the load is borne by the lumbar region. In the 'zero gravity' seats, which debuted in last year's Nissan Altima, the seat provides continuous support from the pelvis to the upper back. This reduces the work its occupant's muscles need to do to support them, increasing bloodflow and decreasing fatigue, especially on longer drives. | <urn:uuid:63bab824-448b-414e-a078-e17bb8d40afa> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://arstechnica.com/cars/2014/06/why-youll-never-drive-your-car-with-a-joystick/2/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501174159.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104614-00085-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963207 | 1,533 | 2.5625 | 3 |
System administrators think we live in a world governed by Newtonian physics where, as Master Yoda would say, "a bit either a one or a zero is." The truth is that today’s datacenter is becoming more and more a quantum reality where there are no certainties, just probabilities. Any time we write data to some medium or another, there’s some probability that we won’t be able to read that data back.
I came to this realization as one of my fellow delegates at Storage Field Day 5 asked the speaker describing EMC’s XtremIO about how its deduplication scheme handled hash collisions. Having argued this point to what I thought was a logical conclusion when deduplication first arrived in the backup market four years ago, my first reaction is to haul out the math like I did in the now-seminal blog post When Hashes Collide.
I then realized that the problem wasn’t just that people weren’t worried about the probability that their data might get corrupted; they were worried about the possibility that their data might be corrupted as if that possibility didn’t even exist with their current solutions. We have to stop thinking of data the way physicists thought about the universe before quantum mechanics raised its complex head. Newton, through his marvelous gravity equation, could calculate the orbits of the planets and predict eclipses. However, when we get to the quantum scale, things get a lot more complicated.
Those of you who remember any of your high school or college physics think of an atom as looking like a miniature solar system with electrons in circular orbits with discrete locations, like the planets.
Quantum mechanics, however, tells us that we can never actually know where any given sub-atomic particle is at any given time. At best, the Schrödinger equations let us create a map of the probabilities of an electron being in specific places. At the quantum level, basically all we know are probabilities -- a fact that so offended Albert Einstein that despite being an agnostic, he famously remarked, “God does not play dice with the universe.”
Electron probability maps look more like this:
Or more accurately, like this:
Well folks, all sorts of things -- from external electromagnetic waves to sympathetic vibrations from adjacent disk drives -- cause bits to randomly change in our storage media and as they're crossing our networks.
A near-line disk drive has an error rate of 1 in 10^15, which means once in every 10^15 times it reads a sector, it will either fail or return the wrong data in an undetected error. That’s a 0.6% probability of an unrecoverable error for each full read or write of a 6TB drive. Now 0.6% isn’t that big a probability of data loss, but it’s big enough that networks and storage systems use checksums and other hash functions to detect errors and allow them to re-read, or recalculate, data from the other drives in the RAID set.
As I calculated in "When Hashes Collide," the odds of a hash collision in a 4PB dataset using 8KB blocks is 4.5x10^26. Since the MTBF (mean time between failures) of an enterprise hard drive is about 2 million hours, the odds of both drives in a RAID 1 set failing within the same hour is 2x10^6 squared or 4x10^12, which is 10^14 (100 billion for those in the US that need the translation) times more likely than data being corrupted due to a hash collision.
New technologies such as deduplication introduce new failure modes, like a hash collision. If you worry about the possibility of this new failure mode without taking the quantum mechanical view of weighing the probability of that failure mode compared to the risks you are already taking, and consider reasonable, the new technology will look dangerous when it’s actually safer than what you’re already doing. | <urn:uuid:df484908-b4da-4bdc-923b-a3a074bac8fa> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.networkcomputing.com/storage/it-quantum-world/25493185?piddl_msgid=225603&image_number=1 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171043.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00205-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946165 | 827 | 2.625 | 3 |
For decades, musicians have been using sound synthesizers to generate audio to replace or complement acoustic instruments. However, some types of complex south synthesis have not been possible on traditional CPUs. Now, sound researchers are turning to GPUs to give them the processing power needed to take on tougher audio challenges.
Bill Hsu and Marc Sosnick-Pérez explore some of the newer GPU techniques being used for synthesizing sounds in an article titled “Finite difference-based sound synthesis using graphics processors,” which was recently published in the Association for Computing Machinery’s online publication, acmqueue.
Due to the lack of computing power, sound synthesizers were forced to use fairly rudimentary techniques to create sounds in real time, the authors write. This includes using compute simple waveforms, using sampling and playback, and applying spectral modeling techniques to model wave forms. A common thread among these techniques is that “they work primarily with a model of the abstract sound produced by an instrument or object, not a model of the instrument or object itself,” Hsu and Sosnick- Pérez write.
As computing power increased, researchers discovered they could create audio waveforms in an entirely new way: by simulating the physical natures and properties of objects and instruments themselves. After a detailed numeric model of the object or instrument is created, it can then be “played” as it would be in the real world.
“By simulating the physical object and parameterizing the physical properties of how it produces sound,” the authors write, “the same model can capture the realistic sonic variations that result from changes in the object’s geometry, construction materials, and modes of excitation.”
Several techniques exist to create the numerical models of objects and instruments, including one, called the finite difference approximation method, which is said to generate very good sound. However, this approach appears too computationally intense to run on CPUs, hence the interest in using GPUs to exploit multi threaded architectures and a high degree of data parallelism.
In their paper, Hsu and Sosnick- Pérez compare how well CPU- and GPU-based systems perform sound synthesis using the finite difference approximation method. The pair used their own software package, called the Finite Difference Synthesizer, in the tests. FDS simulates a vibrating plate (think drum) and runs in a CUDA environment on Mac OS and Linux.
While the results varied, the GPU-based systems consistently outperformed the CPU-only systems. In some cases, a GPU-based system was able to deliver acceptable CD-level sound quality on a two-dimensional grid (think cymbal) that was nearly 50 percent bigger than what the CPU-based system could handle.
There are several caveats to using GPUs with this method, according to the researchers. The first is something called kernel launch overhead, and manifests as a potentially significant delay. The second is that a limit on the number of threads may restrict how the simulation is mapped to the GPU. The third has to do with a potential inability to synchronize the execution of threads. Some of these problems are more apparent on older GPU architectures, and are less a concern on newer architectures, such as NVIDIA Kepler.
Despite the challenges, the future of using finite difference approximation methods and GPUs to model physical objects and instruments for real time audio synthesis appears to be bright. | <urn:uuid:f5163bb9-1d61-4e98-8f26-0fc12c99adb1> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.hpcwire.com/2013/07/16/sound_synthesizers_get_performance_boost_from_gpus/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501172783.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104612-00257-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939022 | 700 | 3.859375 | 4 |
After a year and a half of culling through 6,100 applicants, NASA has chosen four men and four women to train to become astronauts and potentially travel to an asteroid or even Mars.
One of the astronaut trainees is a physicist and chief technology officer.
"These new space explorers asked to join NASA because they know we're doing big, bold things here -- developing missions to go farther into space than ever before," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, in a written statementI. "They're excited about the science we're doing on the International Space Station and our plan to launch from U.S. soil to there on spacecraft built by American companies. And they're ready to help lead the first human mission to an asteroid and then on to Mars."
The space agency reported that the eight-member 2013 astronaut candidate class comes from the second largest number of applications NASA has ever received. The group will receive technical training at space centers around the world to prepare for missions to low-Earth orbit, an asteroid and Mars.
In 2004, President George W. Bush called on NASA to send humans back to the moon by 2020 in a move that he said would prepare the space agency for a manned-mission to Mars.
More recently, President Barack Obama formulated a new plan that calls on NASA to build next-generation heavy-lift engines and robotics technology for use in space travel.
In April, scientists at the University of Washington reported they are working on a rocket that they say could enable astronauts to reach Mars in just 30 days. Using current technology, a round-trip human mission to Mars would take more than four years.
As soon as 2016, NASA plans to send a robotic spacecraft - still unmanned - to an asteroid. The $800 million effort will be the first U.S. mission to carry asteroid samples back to Earth.
"This year we have selected eight highly qualified individuals who have demonstrated impressive strengths academically, operationally, and physically" said Janet Kavandi, director of Flight Crew Operations at Johnson Space Center, in a statement. "They have diverse backgrounds and skill sets that will contribute greatly to the existing astronaut corps. Based on their incredible experiences to date, I have every confidence that they will apply their combined expertise and talents to achieve great things for NASA and this country in the pursuit of human exploration."
The astronaut candidates will begin training at Johnson Space Center in Houston this August. They are:
- Josh A. Cassada, 39, who is originally from White Bear Lake, Minn. Cassada is a former naval aviator who is a physicist by training. Today he serves as co-founder and Chief Technology Officer for Quantum Opus, which focuses on quantum optics research.
- Victor J. Glover, 37, of Pomona, Calif. and Prosper, Texas, a Lt. Commander with the U.S. Navy. He currently serves as a Navy Legislative Fellow in the U.S. Congress.
- Tyler N. Hague, 37, of Hoxie, Kan., who is a Lt. Colonel with the U.S. Air Force. Hague is supporting the Department of Defense as deputy chief of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization.
- Christina M. Hammock, 34, of Jacksonville, N.C., who serves as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Station Chief in American Samoa.
- Nicole Aunapu Mann, 35, from Penngrove, Calif., who is a Major in the U.S. Marine Corps. Mann is an F/A 18 pilot, currently serving as an Integrated Product Team Lead at the U.S. Naval Air Station.
- Anne C. McClain, 34, originally from Spokane, Wash., who is a Major with the U.S. Army. She is an OH-58 helicopter pilot, and a recent graduate of U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Naval Air Station.
- Jessica U. Meir, Ph.D., 35, who is from Caribou, Maine. She is an Assistant Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston.
- Andrew R. Morgan, an M.D., 37, from New Castle, Penn., who is a Major with the U.S. Army. He has experience as an emergency physician and flight surgeon for the Army special operations community, and currently is completing a sports medicine fellowship.
This article, NASAs new astronauts could one day blast off to Mars, was originally published at Computerworld.com.
Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin, on Google+ or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed . Her email address is firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:db2fb931-7686-4b4d-8bd0-a5a1e658b30c> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.computerworld.com/article/2497851/government-it/nasa-s-new-astronauts-could-one-day-blast-off-to-mars.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171053.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00554-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955604 | 988 | 3.046875 | 3 |
The number of jobs in the solar power industry now outnumbers those in the coal-mining sector. But job growth doesn't always mean technology growth; investments in solar power have plummeted.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of April 2014 there were 78,500 coal-mining jobs, not including self-employed contractors. Another report by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration counted 123,227 jobs in 2013, according to PolitiFact.
In contrast, the Solar Foundation's "National Solar Jobs Census," released earlier this year, showed that the solar power industry employed around 143,000 Americans as of November 2013. That's up by 24,000 jobs, or 19.9%, from 2012.
Solar industry employment is expected to grow by another 15.6% this year, according to the Solar Foundation.
Those jobs are attributed mainly to a massive boom in solar installations, which now total 400,000 nationwide, 11 times what were in place in 2008. For example, North Carolina added 335 megawatts (MW) of solar power capacity last year for a total of 592 MW. It now ranks fourth in the U.S. for solar capacity installed.
Today, there are about 13,000 MW of solar capacity installed throughout the U.S.; that's enough electricity to power more than two million homes.
Even with that rapid growth, the U.S. still only gets about 0.23% of its power from solar sources; it gets 39% of its power from coal, 27% from natural gas and 19% from nuclear power, according to Philip Jordan, vice president of the Solar Foundation.
Overall, the U.S. only gets about 12% of its energy from renewable energy sources, 6% of it from hydroelectric and 4.13% from wind turbines.
The Department of Energy (DOE) SunShot Initiative has a goal to make solar energy cost-competitive with other forms of electricity. That goal is to bring the cost of a kilowatt hour of solar power to just 6 cents by 2020 -- the same as coal-fired power. Today, solar power costs about 11 cents per kilowatt hour, according to the DOE.
"The great news is you don't drill for solar, you don't mine solar, you manufacture it," said Rhone Resch, CEO of Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA). "When you manufacture it, you install it, and that means you're creating jobs in the field."
Currently, conventional silicon solar cells have a maximum efficiency rating of 24%.
By increasing solar cell efficiency, the cost of solar power hardware is driven down, Jordan said. (Hardware makes up 44% of the cost of solar power. Labor and other overhead accounts for another 36% with marketing and permits making up the remaining 20%.)
Job growth in the renewable energy market is related to installations and sales -- not investments in technology development, according to Jordan.
"All the trends indicate that solar is becoming a more economical and competitive technology," Jordan said. "But the financing is all about big solar farms rather than early stage R&D for concept work. Clearly, there's been a drop in that kind of investment." | <urn:uuid:6e4964ae-1ad6-4d28-a366-3faf653452ad> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.computerworld.com/article/2489931/emerging-technology/as-jobs-in-solar-power-boom-r-d-investment-falls.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171281.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00078-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959421 | 662 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Wi-Fi technology continues to evolve as wireless devices proliferate and demand for video and other data explodes.
In fact, the impact Wi-Fi will have in the coming years cannot be understated.
New flavors of Wi-Fi are expected to become commonplace in the coming months and years. Standards are evolving or already in place to give one flavor of Wi-Fi the flexibility to work well for, say, every user in a large football stadium. Another flavor will work best for streaming a video in a single room in an apartment. That flavor would could not leak through a wall to a neighbor's apartment.
Wi-Fi will be used with cellular connections more than it is today for smartphones, tablets and other devices in homes and offices.
Coming technologies will provide greater Wi-Fi support for public and semi-public spaces, such as parks, public squares, shopping malls and indoor and outdoor sporting arenas.
The emergence of 802.11ax Wi-Fi
Most smartphone users today are familiar with connecting to the Web over older, slower Wi-Fi standards with technical names such as 802.11a, b, g and n.
The advent of faster 802.11ac began when the first 802.11ac router shipped in 2012. (As a rule or thumb, an entire network with an 802.11ac router functions at up to 1.3 Gpbs, about three times the 450Mbps of 802.11n routers.)
But even before a second wave of improved 802.11ac routers hits in 2015, a new 802.11ax standard is in the works at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE. That body is still defining the standard, and likely won't ratify it until early 2019.
"There's a lot of industry activity to identify what mechanisms go into 802.11ax and what modulation technologies are used," said Greg Ennis, vice president of technology at the Wi-Fi Alliance, an association of more than 600 companies that make Wi-Fi devices. "There's tremendous interest in 802.11ax and lot of people and companies are participating."
While older Wi-Fi standards focused on the data capacity of an overall Wi-Fi network connected to multiple users, 802.11ax will explicitly will focus on actual data speeds to each individual station, or device, such as a smartphone or tablet. The IEEE is looking to boost that speed by four times what's possible today.
While the IEEE hasn't even said what such a 4x speed would be, 802.11ax could certainly push an individual device connection to beyond 1 Gbps, Ennis said.
Meanwhile, Huawei is leading the 802.11ax working group at the IEEE, and has done lab tests showing speeds of 10.53 Gbps over an entire Wi-Fi network.
Huawei is using a new radio technology called MIMO-OFDM in its tests. MIMO (multiple input-multiple output) employs many antennas to send many data streams across a network. OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) uses software to encode and decode a signal at either end of a connection.
The word 'orthogonal' refers to a kind of frequency division technology that sends out data streams at right angles to each other, and then captures and decodes the streams at the receiving end. That approach aims to find a frequency pathway that has the least interference, especially in crowded environments like airports or outdoor venues.
"The increased data rate of [802.11ax] technology means you end up not just increasing the speed for individual [users] but also aggregate capacity in the network," Ennis said in an interview.
"That's a significant improvement of performance not only for those in a sweet spot, but for all the users in a particular Wi-Fi hotspot. One interesting requirement of ax is to address issues seen in dense environments like sports stadiums where there are lots of devices and many applications being used. There will be mechanisms in 802.11ax especially geared towards really good service," he added.
Even though some reports suggest that 802.11ax will rely on MIMO-OFDM technology, Ennis isn't convinced that will be the only approach. "Various technologies are being proposed and until we go further down the road, it's difficult to say that one part is necessarily going forward."
Still, he called MIMO-OFDM a "very strong candidate" and added, "Huawei's announcement of their test results was a good advertisement for the viability of the technology."
Also, Huawei's use of the 5GHz band doesn't mean 802.11ax will use that band exclusively. "The actual project requirements also say that other bands can be considered, including 2.4 GHz," Ennis said.
Another Wi-Fi for tight spaces: 802.11ad, orWiGig
While 802.11ax Wi-Fi could be promising for large, crowded spaces with multiple users running multiple apps, there's also an emerging IEEE standard called 802.11ad that makes use of the 60GHz band.
Also known as WiGig, 802.11ad is expected to work in a short-range fashion, perhaps within a single room, but at relatively fast transmission rates of about 7Gbps. That would make WiGig ideal for use in a room in an apartment, perhaps to prevent a video stream from bleeding into another room or even another apartment or dormitory room.
The 60 GHz band uses very short radio waves, which don't travel through walls easily.
"With Wi-Fi and 802.11ac over 2.4 GHz, going through walls is a good thing because it allow more total home coverage," Ennis said. "But with 802.11ad, short range is a positive in an apartment environment where it won't interfere with the neighbors because it's not going through the wall. You get really high speed in-room capability."
The IEEE ratified 802.11ad in late 2012, and there are few products on the market today that can do things like wirelessly stream an HD video from a Blu-ray player to a video projector (such as the DVDO Air).
The Wi-Fi Alliance is still developing its own WiGig certification process to show which WiGig products will interoperate. The alliance expects to launch a list of interoperable products in 2015, Ennis said.
In early July, Qualcomm announced it had acquired Wilocity, which makes chips based on WiGig. Qualcomm said it will use the WiGig technology in its 64-bit Snapdragon 810 mobile chip. Smartphones and tablets with WiGig are expected ship in the latter half of 2015.
A smartphone that incorporates a WiGig chip could wirelessly transmit a 4K video from a smartphone to a big screen.
Wi-Fi for every situation
With WiGig and 802.11ax on the horizon, Ennis said he's expecting the arrival of routers and devices equipped to work at fast speeds in a variety of settings, from living rooms to outdoor spaces.
Neither standard is widely available today, but 802.11ac products have been on the market for a year. "They are definitely hitting performance points in excess of what consumers need right now, and will continue to satisfy them for the next few years," Ennis said.
"There's no need to wait for products on the coming standards," Ennis advised enterprise customers and consumers alike.
As Wi-Fi expands almost everywhere, there will be implications for city governments that want to provide Wi-Fi in public spaces as well as companies and nonprofits that want to offer services on their campuses or in malls.
Even major cellular carriers like Verizon Wireless and AT&T are planning networks that will rely on greater Wi-Fi capacity, sometimes joining Wi-Fi hot zones to their fastest LTE networks.
In the Kansas City area, Google's installation of Google Fiber to homes has helped prompt a proliferation of wireless Wi-Fi technologies as well. Cable provider Time Warner said in May that it had provisioned 11,000 Wi-Fi hotspots for its Kansas City customers on both sides of the Missouri-Kansas border.
Cisco, meanwhile, said it is working with Kansas City, Mo., officials to launch a new network for smart city services that will rely heavily on the use of mobile apps.
The Wi-Fi Alliance also has a Passpoint certification program that focuses on improving a user's connection and ease of access and discovery of Wi-Fi hotspots.
"Wi-Fi is being incorporated within all kinds of devices and it's now a must for [organizations] to be supporting it," Ennis said.
This story, "Wi-Fi, like ice cream, is coming in many flavors" was originally published by Computerworld. | <urn:uuid:7ed9fd90-6cd7-43ec-ae36-a742af3f21f8> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.networkworld.com/article/2453708/wifi/wi-fi-like-ice-cream-is-coming-in-many-flavors.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501172831.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104612-00606-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958902 | 1,807 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Black Box Explains...Optical isolation and ground loops
Optical isolation protects your equipment from dangerous ground loops. A ground loop is a current across a conductor, created by a difference in potential between two grounded points, as in equipment in two buildings connected by a run of RS-232 or other data line. When two devices are connected and their potentials are different, voltage flows from high to low by traveling through the data cable. If the voltage potential is large enough, your equipment won’t be able to handle the excess voltage and one of your ports will be damaged.
Ground loops can also exist in industrial environments. They can be created when power is supplied to your equipment from different transformers or when someone simply turns equipment on and off. Ground loops can also occur when there is a nearby lightning strike. During an electrical storm, the ground at one location can be charged differently than the other location, causing a heavy current flow through the serial communication lines that damage components.
You can’t test for ground loops. You don’t know you have one until a vital component fails. Only prevention works. For data communication involving copper cable, optical isolation is key.
With optical isolation, electrical data is converted to an optical beam, then back to an electrical pulse. Because there is no electrical connection between the DTE and DCE sides, an optical isolator— unlike a surge suppressor—will not pass large sustained power surges through to your equipment. Since data only passes through the optical isolator, your equipment is protected against ground loops and other power surges. | <urn:uuid:f68e2cb7-04b1-4bc2-84cb-7840233ceea8> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.blackbox.com/en-ca/products/black-box-explains/black-box-explains-optical-isolation-and-ground-loops | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501174215.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104614-00130-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950143 | 322 | 3.46875 | 3 |
It hides in network communications, in all the noise—designed so that defenders can neither detect nor characterize its activity. But its purpose is transparent: to use Twitter, GitHub, and cloud storage services to relay commands and extract data from compromised networks.
Download the report and read about the recently discovered HAMMERTOSS, a malware backdoor created by the Russian advanced persistent threat (APT) group APT29.
How HAMMERTOSS works—the five stages, from looking for a Twitter handle to executing commands, including uploading victim’s data to cloud storage services
Who APT29 is—their history, targets and methodology
Why it’s difficult to detect HAMMERTOSS
Download the report now.
Uncovering a Malware Backdoor that Uses Twitter
HAMMERTOSS: Stealthy Tactics Define a Russian Cyber Threat Group | <urn:uuid:6da8b7c7-69dd-4513-a01d-c8fdc4e0e861> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www2.fireeye.com/APT29-HAMMERTOSS-WEB-2015-RPT.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170600.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00550-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903652 | 176 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Proposed guidelines offer help in managing passwords in the enterprise
- By William Jackson
- Apr 24, 2009
Passwords probably are the most commonly used method of authentication for access to information technology resources, but despite their apparent simplicity, they can be difficult to manage. Long, complex passwords should be more secure than simpler ones, but they also are more difficult for the user to remember, leading to the increased possibility they will be improperly stored.
Password resets also are notorious consumers of help-desk resources.
To help agencies select and implement proper controls, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a draft version of Special Publication 800-118
, titled “Guide to Enterprise Password Management,” for public comment. Comments should be e-mailed by May 29 to firstname.lastname@example.org
, with “Comments SP 800-118” typed in the subject line.
Password management, as defined by NIST, is “the process of defining, implementing and maintaining password policies throughout an enterprise.” Because passwords are used to control access to and protect sensitive resources, organizations need to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of passwords themselves. The goal is to ensure that all authorized users get the access they need, while no unauthorized users get access.
“Integrity and availability should be ensured by typical data security controls, such as using access-control lists to prevent attackers from overwriting passwords and having secured backups of password files,” NIST states. “Ensuring the confidentiality of passwords is considerably more challenging and involves a number of security controls along with decisions involving the characteristics of the passwords themselves.”
Threats to confidentiality of passwords include capturing, guessing or cracking them through analysis. Password guessing and cracking become more difficult with the complexity of the password. The number of possibilities for a given password increases with the length of the password and the possible number of choices for each character. The possible choices for each character of a numerical password are 10 (0 through 9). Possible choices for passwords using letters are 26 for each character. By combing upper and lower case letters, numerals and special characters, there can be as many as 95 possibilities for each character.
A four-digit numerical personal identification number has keyspace of 10,000; that is, there are 10,000 possible combinations. An eight-character password using 95 possibilities for each character has a keyspace of 7 quadrillion. Increasing the length of the password increases the keyspace more quickly than increasing the number of possibilities for each character, NIST states.
One method of password management is to use a single sign-on (SSO) tool, which automates password authentication for the user by controlling access to a set of passwords through a single password. This can make it more feasible for a user to use and remember a single, complex password.
However, “in nearly every environment, it is not feasible to have an SSO solution that handles authentication for every system and resource — most SSO solutions can only handle authentication for some systems and resources, which is called reduced sign-on,” NIST states.
NIST recommends protecting the confidentiality of passwords:
- Create a password policy that specifies all of the organization’s password management-related requirements, including Federal Information Security Management Act and other regulatory requirements. “An organization’s password policy should be flexible enough to accommodate the differing password capabilities provided by various operating systems and applications.”
- Protect passwords from attacks that capture passwords. “Users should be made aware of threats against their knowledge and behavior, such as phishing attacks, keystroke loggers and shoulder surfing, and how they should respond when they suspect an attack may be occurring. Organizations also need to ensure that they verify the identity of users who are attempting to recover a forgotten password or reset a password, so that a password is not inadvertently provided to an attacker.”
- Configure password mechanisms to reduce the likelihood of successful password guessing and cracking. “Password guessing attacks can be mitigated rather easily by ensuring that passwords are sufficiently complex and by limiting the frequency of authentication attempts, such as having a brief delay after each failed authentication attempt or locking out an account after many consecutive failed attempts. Password-cracking attacks can be mitigated by using strong passwords, choosing strong cryptographic algorithms and implementations for password hashing, and protecting the confidentiality of password hashes. Changing passwords periodically also slightly reduces the risk posed by cracking.”
- Determine requirements for password expiration based on balancing security needs and usability. Regularly changing passwords “is beneficial in some cases but ineffective in others, such as when the attacker can compromise the new password through the same keylogger that was used to capture the old password. Password expiration is also a source of frustration to users, who are often required to create and remember new passwords every few months for dozens of accounts, and thus tend to choose weak passwords and use the same few passwords for many accounts.”
William Jackson is a Maryland-based freelance writer. | <urn:uuid:47f7b7ba-3eb7-4980-b1d1-6f7650fc67e8> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://gcn.com/articles/2009/04/24/nist-password-management.aspx | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171706.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00602-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941525 | 1,044 | 2.65625 | 3 |
How to structure ISO 14001 documentation
Development of the documentation and record control system for your ISO 14001-based EMS (Environmental Management System) is a very important part of the implementation, because it will define the method of creation, publishing, withdrawal, and use of your documents and records. It is up to the organization to create the most suitable documentation, because it will affect the way you maintain and improve your EMS. It can be a burden that will make your EMS harder to maintain, and therefore become just a formality, or it can facilitate the maintenance and enable the company to yield the benefits of ISO 14001 implementation. For more information about the benefits of implementing ISO 14001, see: 6 Key Benefits of ISO 14001.
Which document is more important?
Before starting to develop EMS documentation, it is important to get a clear picture of the purpose of each type of document, and where it belongs in the documentation hierarchy. There are several types of documents used to establish an EMS: policy, objectives, manual, procedures, work instructions, guidelines or SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures), and records and forms. Every type of document and record has its place and role in the EMS, as represented below:
Figure 1 – Documentation hierarchy
At the beginning of the implementation and developing of the documentation, people are often confused on which document is the most important and what document comes before another. The simplest way to determine the hierarchy is to see who writes the document, who is it for, and what is its purpose. If the document is written by the top management, then it goes on the top; if it is filled in by the employees, it goes on the bottom of the pyramid.
How to structure your EMS documentation
It is true that the international standard for Environmental Management Systems (ISO 14001) requires certain documentation (see this article: List of mandatory documents required by ISO 14001:2015). The purpose and the benefits of the EMS documentation are manifold: it provides a clear framework of the operations in an organization, it allows consistency of processes and better understanding of the EMS, and it provides evidence for achievement of objectives and goals. When designing EMS documentation, you should focus on efficiency and create processes and documents that are applicable in your organization. The best way to start producing the documents is to understand their role and purpose before creating and enforcing them. The documentation for an Environmental Management System should be structured as follows:
1) EMS Policy. A policy represents a declarative statement by an organization – something like a constitution of the system – and all other documents arise from it. The policy is written by the top management and its purpose is to define the general direction and aim of the EMS. The Environmental Policy also provides a framework for establishing EMS Objectives. For more information about the EMS Policy, see: How to write an ISO 14001 environmental policy.
2) EMS Manual. Although it is not a mandatory document according to ISO 14001, it is often used to document the scope of the EMS and the main elements of the EMS and their interaction, and reference to related documents. Since it is a very common document, it is usually the first document that the certification body wants to see to get familiar with the system. In cases where it is a small company or a company with simple hazards, all procedures can be placed into an EMS Manual. For more information about the EMS Manual, see: What is an environmental management system manual?
3) Procedures. EMS procedures can have different formats and structures. They can be narrative, i.e., described through text; they can be more structured by using tables; they can be more illustrative, i.e., flow charts; or they can be any combination of the above. Procedures should include title, purpose, scope, responsibilities and authorities, description of activities, and reference to relevant work instructions, SOPs, and records.
4) Work instructions, guidelines, and SOPs. The main purpose of work instructions is to avoid nonconformities by explaining exactly how a certain activity is carried out. It is usually written for the activities within the process with the highest chances of nonconformities occurring, or for complex or rarely conducted activities. Work instructions can be part of a procedure, or they can be referenced in a procedure. Generally, work instructions have a similar structure to the procedures and cover the same elements; however, the work instructions include details of activities that need to be realized, focusing on the sequencing of the steps, tools, and methods to be used and required accuracy.
5) Records and forms. Finally, there must be some evidence that activities and processes are conducted in the way prescribed in the procedures and work instructions. This is the main purpose of the records and forms. Most of them are filled in by employees, but some of them (e.g., Management Review Minutes) are filled in by the top management. The best way to make them practical is to avoid requiring employees to write essays. Having records with checkboxes instead of empty rows for employees to write sentences will ensure that the forms or records are filled in quickly and easily.
Good documentation is essential for an effective EMS
Dimensioning the EMS documentation based on your organizational needs is essential for a functional EMS. Moreover, properly structured documentation will make your operations much easier, while incorrect documentation will bring you nothing but trouble.
Click here to download a free whitepaper: List of ISO 14001 mandatory documents, to learn which policies, procedures, and plans are mandatory and which are commonly used. | <urn:uuid:91c70c56-9137-4941-b11d-3eabed39dc86> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://advisera.com/14001academy/blog/2016/11/28/how-to-structure-iso-14001-documentation/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501172017.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104612-00126-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929204 | 1,128 | 2.640625 | 3 |
You may be asking yourself, what if I have a cell phone virus and what is it anyway? You know you keep a lot of precious, valuable data on your phone, and when you hear in the news that mobile threats are on the rise, it’s easy to lose sight of the context behind the numbers and worry that you’ve gotten a dreaded mobile phone virus that’s going to steal your personal info and eat your children. Hopefully we can clarify things by addressing some of the questions that we hear most about so-called Android “viruses.”
Historically carried over from the old PC world, a “virus” is a program that replicates itself by attaching to another program. Hackers often used this method to spread their nefarious work, and virus became a popular term to refer to all types of malicious software (malware) on computers. In the case of smartphones, to date we have not seen malware that replicate itself like a PC virus can, and specifically on Android this does not exist, so technically there are no Android viruses. However, there are many other types of Android malware. Most people think of any malicious software as a virus, even though it is technically inaccurate.
Malware, short for malicious software, is software designed to secretly control a device, steal private information or money from the device’s owner. Malware has been used to steal passwords and account numbers from mobile phones, put false charges on user accounts and even track a user’s location and activity without their knowledge. Learn about some of the most notable malware Lookout has blocked in Resources Top Threats.<?p>
Through Lookout’s research for the State of Mobile Security 2012, we’ve found that user behavior and geography greatly influence your risk of encountering malware. The safest bet is to stick with downloading well-known apps from well-known apps from reputable markets like Google Play in addition to having a security app. Fraudsters make it their job to disguise malware as innocent-looking mobile apps on app stores and websites. So if you’re thinking that it’s a good idea to download a just-published, supposedly free version of Angry Birds you found on a random Chinese app store, it’s probably not. Once installed, these apps may appear to work just as described, but they are can be busy with additional secret tasks. Some apps start out clean, but are given malicious capabilities after a seemingly routine software update.
And conscientious app downloading won’t always minimize your risk. Sneaky, drive-by-download sites can download a potentially malicious app file without any user intervention. Safe Browsing in Lookout Premium for Android will block web-based threats like that, but even so, you also shouldn’t install random downloads from your download manager that you didn’t expect to find there.
It’s pretty simple to minimize the risk of encountering malware, and we’ve got 5 simple mobile security tips right here. The top two ways to protect yourself are to download a mobile security app like Lookout to catch those pesky “phone viruses” and to be judicious about what apps you download and were you download them from. Lookout will scour your phone or tablet for any existing malware, and also examine every new app you download to ensure it is safe. But even before you let Lookout scan your newly downloaded app, you should only download apps from sites you trust, check the ratings and read reviews to make sure they’re widely used and respected.
So, should you worry about getting a phone virus? Nope, because they technically don’t exist. (If they ever do crop up, Lookout will weed them out.) And should you worry about the more accurately termed malware? Well, with a little bit of awareness and Lookout on your phone and by your side, you can keep malware and other mobile threats at bay. | <urn:uuid:408f4633-f798-4c60-8ec2-c541237faf56> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.lookout.com/know-your-mobile/android-virus | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501172017.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104612-00126-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94256 | 814 | 2.875 | 3 |
As posted on Wired.com
The real-world SHODAN isn’t as malevolent as its fictional namesake. But in the wrong hands, it most definitely could be.
Although it has been around since 2009, SHODAN (taken from Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network, a form of artificial intelligence presented as a character in the video game System Shock) is currently being re-evaluated as one of the Internet’s biggest potential data security threats. That’s because SHODAN is a search engine designed not to locate websites and information as Google and Bing do, but computers instead.
Those computers—servers, routers, endpoint devices and the like—form the lion’s share of the world’s high-tech infrastructure. With SHODAN, users can easily identify, and possibly access, corporate communication networks, energy systems, command and control centers, even servers at government facilities. In the wrong hands, SHODAN can be dangerous indeed.
Because of SHODAN’s ability to assist in the disruption of everything from satellite communications to your home security system, many people are concerned. But the reach of this unique search tool is not limited to computers. Once inside a network, the data becomes fair game as well.
The true threat behind SHODAN lies in the number of devices connected to the Internet without some form of intrusion protection. Even if a core system is secure, an unprotected device linked to the system provides a back door for hackers to gain access.
Any individual or organization with confidential data on a computer inside a vulnerable, Internet-connected network runs the risk of data loss. To mitigate this risk, organizations should conduct a comprehensive audit of where data resides, and how (or even if) it is protected. While data sprawl is a fact of modern enterprises, an audit will help expose unsecured machine-to-machine connections (e.g., an industrial control system) that hackers can exploit.
It’s important to note that SHODAN is a “white hat” search tool, used primarily by researchers and security testers. Without a paid subscription it supports only a very limited number of searches. And as the creator of SHODAN, John Matherly, notes, cybercriminals have access to botnets that can achieve much of the same results without detection.
Still, such tools only underscore the need for proactive data protection in both the private and public sectors. Whether you’re a company, a government agency, an organization or just a single computer user, it’s important to proactively protect your data.
Read the full post on Wired.com
Follow us: @Wiredinsights on Twitter | InnovationInsights on Facebook | <urn:uuid:9a13a23b-9a43-4132-9755-7460a0b9dadd> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.druva.com/blog/with-shodan-at-the-door-is-it-still-possible-to-lock-down-data/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170249.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00070-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920035 | 570 | 2.671875 | 3 |
STUN stands for Simple Traversal of User Datagram Protocol (UDP) through Network Address Translators (NAT’s). The protocol is used in several different network implementations, one of which is VoIP. STUN is used to resolve the public IP of a device running behind a NAT, to solve problems such as one-way audio during a phone call or phone registration issues when trying to register to a VoIP or an IP PBX residing on a different network.
In the following articles we explain in detail what the STUN protocol is, its purpose, explain STUN messages, STUN protocol attributes, common error codes and when it is possible to switch off STUN resolution.
- The STUN Protocol and VoIP – Part 1
- The STUN Protocol and VoIP – Part 2
- The STUN Protocol Explained – Messages, Attributes, Error codes
- When and How Can I Switch Off STUN Resolution?
Typically it is used in several different network implementations and scenarios, one of which is in VoIP implementations. | <urn:uuid:dd4c5a0e-2716-4e96-ad87-e6a8f9a07316> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.3cx.com/blog/voip-howto/stun/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170613.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00246-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.884785 | 217 | 3.03125 | 3 |
4G mobile network services may be only just be rolling out in the UK, but work is already underway on the next generation, 5G.
In the UK, that research is being led by the University of Surrey. The university’s Centre for Communication Systems Research (CCSR) is the largest academic research centre for mobile communications in the UK, housing 130 researchers and around 90 PhD students.
The Centre’s work has contributed to the 2G, 3G and 4G standards, and in October last year it received £35 million in funding to build a new ‘Innovation Centre’ focused on 5G networking. That funding came from the UK government and from corporate sponsors including Huawei, Samsung and Telefonica.
Information Age caught up with Professor Rahim Tafazolli, head of the CCSR, about what 5G will deliver, when, and how it will spend that £35 million funding.
What does 5G really mean?
5G means the fifth generation of mobile cellular systems. Every 10 years a new standard comes out and it's given a name. At the moment we have 4G, and 5G will be the next wave of technologies for mobile cellular broadband Internet systems.
What is the objective in developing 5G?
With 3G or 4G the main driver has been speed, whereas with 5G it is about the network capacity.
We expect mobile data traffic to double every year. We are going to need around 20 times more capacity per meter squared than we are offering right now.
The second driver is the energy efficiency of networks – the cost of energy to run the network – as well as the implications for the environment.
As mobile data traffic doubles, the cost of electricity will double every year too. It's as simple as that. It's a linear relationship, and we want to provide huge amounts of capacity for a fraction of the energy consumption that we are using right now.
I don't want to be accused of scaremongering but we are going to be running out of capacity soon"
Professor Rahim Tafazolli
University of Surrey
When do you expect the demand for 5G to become apparent?
I think we will start feeling the congestion and lack of capacity in around three years' time. I don't want to be accused of scaremongering but we are going to be running out of capacity soon.
Which part of the spectrum would 5G work on?
We are looking at all of the spectrum below 5 GHz, which includes 4G spectrum, 3G and 2G spectrum, as well as some of the broadcasting spectrum which is 700MHz.
We will also be exploring the possibility of using milimetric bands of 60GHz all the way through to 90GHz. A huge amount of bandwidth is available in that frequency band.
We are going to explore and identify the characteristics of the propagation in these sort of frequencies, and whether they are suitable for a mobile radio.
And when do you think 5G will be commercially available?
It was in the past few years, 4G has been deployed in most West European countries and the US in the last two years. The UK was a bit late because of the spectrum auction, and it will go on for another eight to 10 years' time.
But if you look each generation, from 2G to 3G was about 12 years, 3G to 4G was about 10 years and 4G to 5G I estimate will be about eight years, a maximum nine before it is introduced to market.
We need to start researching and carry out standardisation now if we believe in this trend in order to specify what other future technologies and innovations we can include in the standards. That begins now.
Have there been any standards developed yet?
We have already started work on Release 12 of the 3GPP standard [the first iteration of the mobile networking standard since 4G].
How will you use your £35 million funding?
We're going to build a new purpose-built research centre, which will be good enough to accommodate our own researchers and businesses that want to come and research with us.
The funding will be spent on the research equipment because we want to do experimental simulative research and mathematical analysis. We plan to deploy a test bed on campus, which consists of a number of base stations and mobile terminals and covers an area of four kilometres squared. We’ll use that for demonstrations and proofs-of-concept. | <urn:uuid:3f4ce378-c942-4ee6-b38a-05acd88bfb81> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.information-age.com/leading-the-5g-charge-123456850/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171608.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00470-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960639 | 922 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Building a Linux Dial-up Server, Part 2
In part 1 we looked at a simple setup for creating and sharing a dial-up Internet connection. Today we'll learn how to build a dial-in server. A dial-in server is useful for remote system administration, remote user access, or building a low-cost WAN. A Linux dial-in server can serve as a gateway for both Linux and Windows boxes.
There are three primary elements to a Linux dial-in server:
A getty – 'get tty' – is a daemon that monitors serial lines. Modems are represented by ttySN — /dev/ttyS0, /dev/ttyS1, dev/ttyS2, and /dev/ttyS3. There are all kinds of different Linux and Unix gettys. mgetty is especially good — it supports data, fax, and voice, and integrates nicely with pppd. If your system does not have mgetty, I recommend getting it.
At root, open /etc/mgetty/login.config for editing. (Note: check your documentation for file locations, as they may vary.) We want to add this line:
/AutoPPP/ - - /usr/sbin/pppd file /etc/ppp/options.server
Note that a similar line may already be present:
/AutoPPP/ - a_ppp /usr/sbin/pppd auth -chap +pap login debug
These represent two different ways of doing the same thing. The first line, which I prefer, puts all the pppd options into a file named /etc/ppp/options.server. You can name this file anything you like. (The docs I learned from use /etc/ppp/options.server, and I'm too lazy to think of something else.) PPP is a peer-to-peer protocol, so our dial-in server options could also go into /etc/ppp/options. Since it's being used as a server, I like this method as it eases the strain on my aging brain.
mgetty is not run from the command line; it's a daemon. Start it at boot with an entry in inittab:
S0:2345:respawn:/sbin/mgetty ttyS0 /dev/ttyS0
Note the tricky bits — on my system the modem is an external serial modem at /dev/ttyS0. I've selected runlevels 2,3,4, and 5. Use appropriate values for your system. Then run init -q to start it up.
One way to configure etc/ppp/options.server is to copy the contents of /etc/ppp/options, comments and all, and then edit it for dial-in server duties. This is the good and educational method. The fast way is to start fresh and copy the following (be sure to have only one command per line):
'asyncmap' could be a chapter by itself — set the value to zero to turn off escaping control characters, unless you have a need to manage escaping control characters (now doesn't that inspire some interesting mental images...) Do not leave this out, because then by default, all control characters will be escaped, and nothing will work right.
The 'modem' and 'crtcts' lines enable hardware flow control. I can't imagine using software (xonxoff) flow control, unless you have an unimaginably ancient or bizarre modem. Fortunately, both ancient and bizarre modems are well-supported in Linux, if this is indeed your situation.
'lock' is for locking the serial device so that no other system functions can take it over.
The 'require-pap' and 'refuse-chap' lines are examples of selecting the type of authentication.
'proxyarp' is very important. All machines dialing in to your server must have an IP address. If they don't, proxyarp assigns one to the serial port. The first IP address belongs to the server, and the second one, delimited by a colon, is assigned to the user dialing in. Obviously, you don't want to have any duplicate IPs on the subnet.
You can use either PAP or CHAP for authentication, but CHAP is more secure. Username/passwords are stored in /etc/ppp/chap-secrets or /etc/ppp/pap-secrets. On the server, you'll need to enter all the username/password pairs that are allowed access. The clients need only their own username/password. For the simplest PAP authentication, add the 'noauth' option to /etc/ppp/options on all the clients that are authorized to connect to your dial-in server (see the PPPD Auth Gotcha from part 1 for more on this).
The format is the same for both, and supplying the username and password is sufficient:
user server secret address
username * password *
Of course, server names and IP addresses can be added for increased security and control.
Alternatively, you can do away with PAP/CHAP entirely by adding the following to /etc/ppp/options:
This will tell PPP to authenticate against Linux system passwords, rather than hassling with secrets files.
Good to Go
At this point, we have a functioning dial-in server that you can use for connecting to a fileserver, as a gateway to other PCs inside the network, or as a quick and easy WAN link. (See the Linux Network Administrator's Guide for how to set up routing using ip-up and ip-down).
Dial-on-Demand and Persistent Dialing are two useful methods of keeping a client connected:
This is the frugal way to manage a dialup connection. To activate dial-on-demand – when sending email, for example – add these lines to /etc/ppp/options:
'demand' means simply run on demand. PPP starts partway, and then waits for the 'connect' command.
'holdoff' sets, in seconds, how to long to wait between redials.
'idle' will disconnect ppp after the configured number of seconds of no activity on the line.
To keep the line alive constantly, add these lines to /etc/ppp/options:
This tells ppp to stay connected, and to redial after 60 seconds if the connection is broken.
That wraps up our two-part look at building dial-up and dial-in servers for Linux. I hope you've enjoyed it! | <urn:uuid:9627c109-f614-42b1-b33e-342aba27b2b6> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/print/netos/article.php/2238531/Building-a-Linux-Dialup-Server-Part-2.htm | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501173872.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104613-00346-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.873216 | 1,397 | 2.78125 | 3 |
NASA engineers have created a spray paint that seals in the gases that most typically create that new car smell almost everyone loves.
The problem is, that smell - or outgases as NASA calls them -- is generated by chemicals and solvents used to manufacture dashboards, car seats, carpeting and other components that are not particularly good to breathe and as NASA points out, some can be detrimental to sensitive satellite instruments containing the same ingredients.
OTHER NEWS: Quick look: The Higgs boson phenomenon
"Outgassed solvents, epoxies, lubricants, and other materials aren't especially wholesome for contamination-sensitive telescope mirrors, thermal-control units, high-voltage electronic boxes, cryogenic instruments, detectors and solar arrays, either. As a result, NASA engineers are always looking for new techniques to prevent these gases from adhering to instrument and spacecraft surfaces and potentially shortening their lives," NASA stated.
Engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center what they call a patent-pending sprayable paint that adsorbs these gaseous molecules and stops them from affixing to instrument components. The paint is made from zeolite, a mineral used in industry for water purification and a colloidal silica binder that acts as the glue holding the coating together. "The new molecular adsorber is highly permeable and porous - attributes that trap the outgassed contaminants. Because it doesn't contain volatile organics, the material itself doesn't cause additional outgassing," NASA stated.
NASA noted that many instrument developers use zeolite-coated cordierite devices that look like hockey pucks to absorb gases but that technology requires multiple units, which require complex mounting hardware that can be heavy and take up a lot of real estate.
"The new paint, however, overcomes these limitations by providing a low-mass alternative. Because technicians can spray the paint directly onto surfaces, no extra mounting equipment is necessary. In addition, technicians can coat adhesive strips or tape and then place these pieces in strategic locations within an instrument, spacecraft cavity, or vacuum system, further simplifying adsorber design. This is an easy technology to insert at a relatively low risk and cost. The benefits are significant," said co-Principal Investigator Mark Hasegawa, of NASA Goddard in a statement.
NASA says a number of industry players are interested in the new spray including Northrop Grumman; the European Space Agency; the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder; and Spica Technologies. In addition, NASA's ICESat2 ATLAS project is evaluating its use, pending the outcome of additional tests.
NASA said its development team plans to tweak the paint's recipe to enhance its performance and experiment with different pigments, mainly black, to create a coating to absorb stray light that can overcome the light scientists actually want to gather. NASA said it also believes the technology could be used on the International Space Station or future space habitats to trap pollutants and odors in crew quarters.
Check out these other hot stories: | <urn:uuid:fe683254-cdbf-4b0f-aaed-8caec698fe2d> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.networkworld.com/article/2223528/data-center/nasa-paint-kills-that-new-car-smell--saves-satellites-too.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501173872.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104613-00346-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933358 | 631 | 3.34375 | 3 |
5 strategies for addressing cybercrime
From Jesse James to Butch Cassidy to Bonnie and Clyde, criminals have robbed individuals, stage coaches, trains and banks. Why? Because, as Willie Sutton famously said, “that’s where the money is.” Fast forward to the internet age, criminal conduct has expanded dramatically to include new types of fraud, theft and espionage conducted through cyberspace.
Cybercrime can be far reaching with long-term effects -- from the impact on organizations from the theft of intellectual property or business secrets to the consequences identity theft can have on an individual, including credit standing and loss of personal resources.
Responding to cybercrime is even more challenging because the economics favor the criminals. With just a laptop, a single individual can wreak havoc on individuals and organizations with minimal cost and little risk of being caught.More advanced technologies and protective measures will eventually deter nefarious conduct, help security officers catch and prosecute perpetrators and level what has become an unbalanced playing field. In the meantime, it is imperative that all digital users practice basic cybersecurity hygiene to increase their own protection and improve cybersecurity overall.
It is estimated that roughly 80 percent of exploitable vulnerabilities in cyberspace are the direct result of poor or nonexistent cyber hygiene. While it is also important to address the remaining 20 percent of more-sophisticated intrusions -- advanced persistent threats, distributed denial of service attacks, botnets, destructive malware and the growing challenge of ransomware -- raising the bar for basic cyber hygiene will improve our overall cybersecurity protection profile and reduce the threat from cybercrime.
Cybersecurity is a shared responsibility and requires the attention of a broad range of stakeholders. It requires an effective public/private partnership that incorporates businesses and institutions of all sizes along with national, state, local, tribal and territorial agencies to produce successful outcomes in identifying and addressing threats, vulnerabilities and overall risk in cyberspace. Individual consumers also have a role, and adding cybersecurity to K-12 as well as higher education curriculums will help raise awareness for all users. Teaching users how to better protect themselves is a necessary component to any strategy.
A framework addressing cybercrime should include these five strategies:
1. Raising awareness
A comprehensive and sustained national cybersecurity education campaign is essential for raising public awareness of the risk and impact of cyber activity and the need to deploy basic protective measures on desktops, laptops, tablets, phones and other mobile devices. The explosion of connected devices -- from smart refrigerators, lighting systems, heating and air conditioning, security services to autonomous automobiles -- puts an exclamation point behind the importance of cyber protection for individual users and organizations of all sizes and levels of sophistication.
Cybersecurity education should cover the basics:
- Use strong passwords.
- Apply system updates in a timely and efficient manner.
- Secure devices by enabling a firewall and deploy solutions to address viruses, malware and spyware.
- Learn not to click on email links or attachments, unless the sender is known and trusted. Even then, phishing emails sometimes spoof the sender’s identity to trick the user into clicking a link or attachment.
2. Leveraging trusted resources
Additionally, building, maintaining, scaling and updating an online source of information on how users of all levels of sophistication can establish and improve their protection profiles in cyberspace is imperative. Leveraging capabilities, such as those created in the United States by the National Cyber Security Alliance through Stay Safe Online or in the United Kingdom with Get Safe Online, to implement a comprehensive and sustained national education and awareness campaign is a fundamental component of any successful cybersecurity program. Current cybersecurity efforts, such as the Stop… Think… Connect campaign sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, are a good start. However, existing programs need to scale more broadly to accelerate positive change.
Enterprises can reference valuable tools such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, Center for Internet Security/SANS Top 20 Controls, ISO 27001 and NIST 800-53 for recommendations on improving an overall cybersecurity profile.
3. Building an economic framework
Simply purchasing every new tool or security product is not the answer. From the individual user to the small business to the large enterprise, it is important to make investment decisions for cybersecurity in a risk management construct that includes trying to secure the biggest bang for the buck. AFCEA International’s Cybersecurity Committee took a look at this issue and provides useful information to assist in the examination around the economics of cybersecurity. More information can be found here and here.
4. Working with invested partners
Improving our national and global capabilities to detect, prevent, mitigate and respond to cyber events through a joint, integrated, 24x7 public/private operational capability that leverages information sharing, analysis and collaboration should be a priority. To build a mature operational capability for cybersecurity, we should learn from how the National Weather Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention leverage technology and data analytics to identify patterns and trends to issue early alerts and warnings as well as recommendations for potential protective measures.
Working through the global community to address gaps and coordinate law enforcement, investigation and prosecution of cyber criminals will help tackle both the economics and the challenges of anonymity in nefarious cyber activity. Global agreement on cyber deterrence and norms of cyber conduct will benefit national and economic security, public health and safety and everyday life in cyberspace.
5. Implementing a response plan
Implementing a National Cyber Incident Response Plan is essential to national and economic security. It should recognize the unique nature and risk presented by cyber events and provide a predictable and sustained clarity around roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders during thresholds of escalation. A strategic, yet agile, framework should be accompanied by operational playbooks that focus on critical infrastructure. These steps are necessary to achieve ground truth and situational awareness during a cyber event.
There are initiatives across these topic areas, but many remain ad hoc. Ongoing improvement in cybersecurity requires a coherent, coordinated and collaborative approach across the stakeholder community. It is not just about the federal government, it is also about state, local, tribal and territorial agencies. It is not just about the public sector, it must include industry in a true partnership founded on mutual respect and engagement that honors, recognizes and leverages roles, responsibilities and capabilities in a joint, integrated and collaborative manner. It is not just about domestic risk, it is about global risk to an interconnected and interdependent community and the threat to national and economic security.
Each of us has a role to play in improving our individual and collective cybersecurity. With the proliferation of mobiles devices and the explosion of the Internet of Things presenting new and emerging cyber challenges, we must implement basic protective measures that will help to reduce the risk while increasing the cost and difficulty for cyber criminals.
Although we are no longer dealing with bandits hiding behind rocks to hijack a stagecoach, we are nonetheless still facing website defacers, hackers for hire, criminals seeking financial gain, political hacktivists, nation states engaged in political and economic espionage or even terrorist organizations.
Together, we must move forward aggressively to improve our national cybersecurity posture in a globally connected world. With a multidimensional and coherent approach to cybersecurity and cybercrime, each of us can contribute to make a meaningful difference. | <urn:uuid:40b3a1e6-d39c-4f84-a55b-e318acba8c13> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://gcn.com/articles/2017/01/11/strategies-addressing-cybercrime.aspx?admgarea=TC_SecCybersSec | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170925.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00466-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925778 | 1,473 | 2.78125 | 3 |
TPM is a chip that provides control over what software can or cannot run on the computer. The argument is that this provides a high level of user security and industry digital rights management. If only good software is allowed, bad software (such as malware and illegally downloaded videos and software) cannot run. The current version of TPM is selectable – the user can choose to opt in or opt out of its use.
The problem with version 2.0 is that it is controlled by the operating system and always on. German publication Zeit Online has seen a number of government documents that indicate growing concern among German federal agencies. The problem focuses on three issues: firstly, TPM 2.0 is default on; secondly, the user cannot opt out; and thirdly, it is controlled by the operating system – that is, Windows 8 and Microsoft.
Zeit quotes from a document produced by the Ministry of Economics as long ago as early 2012, which concludes, "The use of 'trusted Computing' technique in this form...is unacceptable for the federal administration and the operators of critical infrastructure." The perceived danger is that Microsoft, a US company, could secretly be compelled either by existing or future US legislation, to hand the TPM keys over to the NSA. That would effectively be giving the NSA a permanent back door to all Windows 8 TPM 2.0 computers that could never be closed; nor even monitored to see by whom or when it was being used.
But Zeit suggests that the potential problems go even further. Quoting professor Rüdiger Weis from the Beuth University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, it suggests that the TPM keys could be intercepted in the country of chip manufacture – China. Theoretically, then, any user of Windows 8 with TPM 2.0 could be handing the computer’s entire contents to either or both the NSA and the Chinese authorities, without ever being aware of it.
Zeit also notes that the German authorities had tried to influence the development of TPM 2.0 as an interested stakeholder. The Germans, however, were “simply rebuffed. Others have got what they wanted. The NSA, for example. At one of the last meetings between the TCG and various stakeholders, someone dropped the line, ‘The NSA agrees.’”
The BSI (the German Federal Office for Information Security) yesterday published an ‘opinion’ on the issue. It notes that for some users who either cannot or do not wish to operate their own security, and who trust the manufacturer, TPM 2.0 “provides and maintains a safe solution.” But, it adds, “the use of Windows 8 in combination with a TPM 2.0 is accompanied by a loss of control over the operating system and the hardware used. This results, especially for the federal government and critical infrastructure, in new risks.” | <urn:uuid:dde1d585-5242-4bc9-aed8-f0658e294f4a> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/german-federal-government-warns-on-the-security/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171166.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00642-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959387 | 598 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Lurch lets you enter math in a document -- and check it, too
Lurch is an open source math word processor which allows you to create documents, insert a full mathematical argument, and validate it, too.
This isn’t just a matter of checking that "2+2=4", either. The program also supports and "understands" algebra, calculus and proofs.
While this sounds complex, Lurch works at many different levels. And at its simplest, you can use the program as basic editor with OpenMath-based support for equations. Create a text document, and enter math expressions using the toolbar, calculator or TeX notation.
Whatever you create is immediately rendered using MathJax, the same display engine used to display equations in just about every browser. And Lurch can save your work as an HTML page, or just a fragment of HTML code, ready for sharing with others.
The program isn’t just about static text entry, though. Simple markup tools allow you to tell Lurch what different parts of the document mean. In the example expression "Since 1<2 and 2<3 we know that 1<3 by transitivity", you would mark up "1<2", "2<3" and "1<3" as meaningful, "transitivity" as the reason, and click "Validate" to have the program check your work.
Better still, the logic behind all this isn’t buried in the source code. Lurch validates your arguments using more than 100 predefined rules, covering everything from "addition" and "multiplication" to "logic", "DeMorgan" and "Cartesian product". These are all ready to view (Meaning > List all defined rules), and you can even add new rules of your own, as necessary.
Lurch isn’t for math beginners. You have to construct an argument before the program can validate it. But if that’s no problem, the rest of the program works very well indeed: it’s simple to use, gives you plenty of freedom in defining your proof, and can easily be extended with custom validation rules. | <urn:uuid:4e1ff6ef-62ad-4470-9f8b-57944cbf3812> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://betanews.com/2014/04/07/lurch-lets-you-enter-math-in-a-document-and-check-it-too/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171834.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00342-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.891468 | 448 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Wireless networks make any area in your building a workspace, helping employees be productive in conference rooms, colleagues' offices, and the company café. It's a welcoming gesture to offer visitors wireless Internet acces.
Wireless networking is such an important requirement that if you don't implement it, and make it easy to use, you may find your employees doing it themselves. Unfortunately, most employees (and home users) install wireless access points with the default security settings, leaving networks wide open. Some system administrators, unaware of the risks, do the same.
It's trivial to set up a wireless network. Setting up one that's secure and meets all the needs of your enterprise is a totally different beast. To secure a wireless network, you address the same issues that you do when you secure your wired networks. It's always a good idea to start with a policy that covers the following:
Access control: who can access your wireless network and what services they can use. You may classify users by role and allow them access to specific services as dictated by their role. Employees can access internal services, while visitors can only access the Internet. Professors can access the grading system, students can't.
Privacy: how you keep traffic on your wireless network secure so that someone in your parking lot can't view your company secrets.
Admission requirements: what protection mechanisms, such as antivirus software, spyware scanners, and vendor patches, are required before a system can be placed on your network.
Wireless Ethernet networks
Wireless networking has become popular because of standards that promote interoperability. There are lots of proprietary wireless networks, but the ones that most people actually use are based on the IEEE
802.11 specifications. The WiFi Alliance® allows the WiFi® brand to denote products that
comply with the most common standards, hence “wireless networking” and “WiFi networking” are almost synonymous these days.
Devices that follow the 802.11 specifications implement a wireless Ethernet network. The interfaces between wired and wireless Ethernet networks are known as access points. These can be configured as routers or bridges. Routers are often used with NAT and a DHCP server to make it easy for clients to access the network. They can be configured to work with a captive portal that redirects any Web request to an authentication page, blocking all traffic from the client until she presents the appropriate credentials.
Captive portals are particularly useful for guest access - not only does it make your guests feel “special” and make your organization look professional, but it also gives you a way of tracking who is using your guest access. Captive portals are available as open-source or commercial software, and some access points have them built in.
The wireless popularity contest
The first of the 802.11 standards in wide use was 802.11 b, the original 11 Mbps WiFi network. The 802. 11g standard later brought the maximum theoretical speed up to 54 Mbps. Because the two standards use the same radio frequencies, most 802.11 g-compliant devices are compatible with both b and g networks. The 802.11 a standard is the Sony Betamax of the wireless world. It is technologically superior because it uses a
Figure 1: Example wireless architecture with a single access point.
broader range of frequencies, making it easier to blanket an area with access points with less interference where the coverage areas intersect. Unfortunately, it lost the popularity contest because it is incompatible with 802.11 b/g equipment. 802.11 a-compliant devices are still available, but they'd be a bad choice for your guest network, because most people don't own 802.11 a-compliant devices. The 802.11 n standard is projected for November 2007, and is expected to offer another six to 10-fold increase in speed (asymmetric) over 802.11 g, and up to a 50-fold improvement over 802.11 b.
That's the story at the radio-frequency level. A network's Service Set Identifier (SSID) differentiates one network from another, and allows clients to choose the network to which they want to connect. Some access points support multiple SSIDs, allowing them to support different networks from the same device. This can be used to separate employee and visitor or professor and student networks. Authentication mechanisms determine who gets access to your network, and what access rights they have. Encryption mechanisms make authentication secure, and they protect traffic from being observed or corrupted. Good encryption uses key rotation with a new key for every packet. Bad encryption uses the same key for all packets, making your network easy to crack.|
There are techniques to authenticate you to the network, and techniques for encrypting your network traffic, and some mechanisms do both. When you think about cryptography, consider that the access point and the client must exchange keys that drive the cipher used to encrypt your data. Both must be secure.
WEP, or Wireless Equivalent Privacy, was meant to make wireless networks as secure as wired networks, but unfortunately its designers seemed to design it without consulting cryptography experts. It uses the same key for authentication, encryption, and for every packet. It is very easy to crack, and you shouldn't consider using it for anything. Filtering clients by MAC address is another technique that you should dismiss because of how easy it is to spoof.
WPA™, or WiFi Protected Access™, was a stopgap to WEP's problems until the 802.11 i standard could be designed and WPA2™ implemented. WPA works with legacy hardware. Both use a protocol called TKIP to rotate keys for every packet, which is a very good thing.
WPA2 implements the mandatory parts of the 802.11i standard. It uses the AES cipher, stronger than RC4 used by WPA and WEP. Authentication methods include the following:
WPA2 Personal (or PSK mode) uses a single shared key forauthentication. Shared keys use passphrases, which are vulnerable to password guessing.
WPA2 Enterprise is based on a per-user key that an 802.11 x standard-compliant authentication server manages.
EAP, or Extensible Authentication Protocol, is the framework used by WPA2 to authenticate users and exchange
keys. It can be supported with an 802.11 x-compliant authentication server such as RADIUS.
EAP/TLS is a flavor of EAP that uses Public-Key Encryption (PKI) to exchange keys securely. It is in wide use.
PEAP is an IETF open standard promoted by Cisco, Microsoft, and RSI that also uses server-side PKI.
The bottom line: always stay away from WEP, and use WPA2 with PEAP. This establishes a mechanism that you can use to grant rights, revoke them, and authenticate on a per-user basis. You might consider using less-secure, but more common, WPA with a pre-shared key (PSK) for your guest network, along with a captive portal to control and monitor who gets access. Captive portals not only handle access control, but also their authentication pages give you a chance to present visitors with information such as a site map, an event schedule, or the daily special in the cafeteria. You've seen captive portals at work in coffee shops, hotels, and airports.
Remember that client devices that connect to your wireless network might be infected with viruses, worms, and Trojan horses, so a firewall between the wireless and wired networks is a must.
A secure wireless architecture
The first thing you need to develop your own secure wireless architecture is a set of policies that help you to understand what you need to implement. In organizations where you need to support different classes of users, a key principle is to segment traffic, just as you do internally to separate networks such as engineering and finance. Use VLANs, firewalls, and packet filters to make sure that you can control the traffic from each segmented network.
The guest network
To support visitors to your site, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to use your network, but difficult for people at the coffee shop next door (or hackers in your parking lot). You may want to use a less secure network encryption mechanism (such as WPA) so that most visitors' devices will connect, and a captive portal to control who actually gets to use the network. You should provide them only with access that you give an outside Internet user.
The employee network
You want to make it as easy as possible for your employees to get onto their network, but since you have more control over the hardware they use, you can select one of the more secure mechanisms such as WPA2 with PEAP. Even these additional authentication and encryption mechanisms aren't impenetrable, and employee laptops might have picked up nasty viruses at home, so you'll want to be careful about what services you open up. Better yet, consider installing a Network Admission Control platform that can perform client posture assessment, to automatically check for protection such as antivirus and antispyware tools (as well as patches) before the system is granted access to the network. You might want to provide access to print services, but don't open up your network file servers to the wireless network.
An example architecture
Here's a simple, one-access-point wireless network that illustrates the points above (Figure 1). Enterprise-grade access points that support multiple SSIDs can funnel traffic from each SSID onto different VLANs on the wired network, giving you more control over where the traffic can go. Use a good access point with a different SSID for each of your two networks. Route your guest network traffic through your captive portal, to the firewall, and onto the Internet. Route employee network traffic onto the Internet (if that's where it's going) or to specific services that you have protected with an additional layer of security. You can do this based on role so that, for example, finance people can access their network services, including the payroll system, while engineers can access application development systems.
Implement and verify
As with your wired network, you'll want to verify that the wireless network you've implemented does what you think it should. First use a tool to verify that your wireless networks are visible and accessible as you expect them to be. Use a tool such as airsnort (airsnort.shmoo.com), netstumbler (www.netstumbler.org), or macstumbler to attempt to crack your networks. While you're at it, plan to use them on a continuing basis to watch for rogue access points.
Once you've verified wireless network security, go to the next layer and make sure that your firewall and captive portal are configured properly. Use a port-scanning tool such as nmap, and make sure that your captive portal doesn't let any traffic through until you've authenticated. Once you authenticate, make sure that you can't get to any internal services from the guest network. Then check your employee network, and verify that each of the employee roles you've defined allows the access you have granted, and no more.
Wireless networks are an important part of doing business today. Carefully implemented wireless networks are useful business tools, and they don't require you to compromise security. Carelessly implemented wireless networks are not much different than leaving your front door unlocked.
Did you know ?
Most analysts estimate that average IT server utilization is only between 20% and 30% of total capacity. | <urn:uuid:303f8c62-31e4-4a55-9d94-794e83baec70> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.appliedtrust.com/resources/infrastructure/have-wireless-access-will-work-for-food | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171834.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00342-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9456 | 2,382 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Much of the talk about the Internet of Things (IoT) focuses on the “things” themselves – wearables, sensors, iBeacons, and other network-connected machines. However, the greatest value for organizations comes from combining the data generated by these devices with other customer or operational data to uncover insights and establish predictive models. This is the incredible promise of IoT, but without the ability to link data from the smart, networked “things” with other business data, its value is limited.
Instead of isolated IoT projects that aren’t connected to the core corporate data infrastructure, there is an opportunity to use IoT data to create business value. Organizations can combine customer data from devices with other customer data to gain new insights and identify new signals of potential churn or propensity to purchase. These insights can lead to a deeper understanding of and greater responsiveness to customers. For example, retailers can combine data gathered from in-store iBeacons with customer transaction histories and store behavioral models to determine the best promotion to send or other actions to take, such as notifying the store staff that a VIP has arrived.
There are also massive opportunities to put IoT data to work in predictive models to improve maintenance scheduling or provide just-in-time service before a product fails. For example, many owners of electric vehicles receive remote diagnostics reports with information about faults or upcoming service needs based on interpretations of the data the vehicles generate.
The challenge that many organizations face is how to systematically understand the data flowing from “things” and combine it with other relevant enterprise data to create value. IoT data usually consists of custom log files, is sometimes misnamed, and appears unstructured. In fact, IoT data has structure, but it isn’t in a traditional relational or other standard format. The log file structures and included data points vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, model to model, software version to software version or even company to company. For example, the structures of the terabytes of data coming from an individual jet engine differs by airline as well as by manufacturer and model. As another example, farming automation and industrial machine suppliers, all with many different models and variants, have hundreds or thousands of different log file formats coming from their products used by customers across the globe. This introduces significant complexity in any attempt to interpret the data and then format, normalize, and combine it with other relevant data for analysis or operational systems. Without tools to help interpret and parse IoT data, the time and effort to put the IoT data to work is costly, time consuming, and prone to manual error.
In order to fully realize the value of combining IoT data and other enterprise data in an agile way, organizations must leverage modern data management tools to accelerate and automate the processes. Using tools to profile data, intelligently discover its structure, and then automatically parse and combine it with other relevant enterprise data on an ongoing basis makes the IoT data more accessible. This creates an infrastructure for ongoing expansion and evolution in the use of IoT data to understand customers and create predictive models for operational systems.
Pioneers in the IoT space are creating innovative solutions for IoT data that combine interactive, visual models of the data with machine learning, in turn speeding up the ability to derive business value from IoT. Once the data model for a particular device is understood, mapped, and prepared, data transformation and delivery to consuming systems can be automated for production use.
Join Informatica in the IoT data revolution and give us feedback on our new machine learning-powered system for intelligent structure discovery of IoT and other machine data here. And, for advice about big data that will help you keep your project on track, download The Big, Big Data Workbook.
Caption: Machine learning-assisted Informatica Intelligent Structure Discovery | <urn:uuid:056824dd-0f67-4191-8ea1-7c89c9794d2f> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.computerworld.com/article/3047499/internet-of-things/the-keys-to-putting-iot-data-to-work-for-your-organization.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170434.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00158-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914386 | 769 | 2.640625 | 3 |
UNIX® systems have hundreds of utility applications or commands. Some commands manipulate the file system, while others query and control the operating system itself. A healthy number of commands provide connectivity, and an even larger set of commands can generate, permute, modify, filter, and analyze data. Given the long and rich history of UNIX, chances are your system has just the right tool for the task at hand.
Moreover, when a single utility doesn't suffice, you can combine any number of UNIX utilities in a variety of ways to create your own tool. As you've seen previously, you can leverage pipes, redirection, and conditionals to build an impromptu tool immediately on the command line, and shell scripts combine the power of a small, easy-to-learn programming language with the UNIX commands to build a tool you can reuse over and over again.
Of course, there are times when neither the command line nor a shell script is
adequate. For example, if you must deploy a new daemon to provide a new network
service, you might switch to a rich language, such as
or Python, to write the application yourself. And because so many
applications are freely available on the Internet—freely meaning no
cost, licensed under liberal terms, or both—you can also download, build,
and install a suitable, working solution to meet your requirements.
Many versions of UNIX (and Linux®) provide a special tool called a package manager to add, remove, and maintain software on the system. A package manager typically maintains an inventory of all software installed locally, as well as a catalog of all software available in one or more remote repositories. You can use the package manager to search the repositories for the software you need. If the repository contains what you're looking for, all it takes is one command or a few clicks of the mouse to install a new package on your system.
A package manager is invaluable. With it, you can remove entire packages, update existing packages, and automatically detect and fulfill any prerequisites for any package. For example, if you choose software to manipulate images, such as the stalwart ImageMagick, but your system lacks the library to process JPEG images, the package manager detects and installs what is missing before it installs your package.
Yet, there are also instances where the software you need is available but is not (yet) part of any repository. Given the predominance of package management, most software comes bundled in a form you can download and install using the package manager. However, because any number of versions and flavors of UNIX are available, it can be difficult to offer every application in each package manager format for each particular variation. If your UNIX installation is mainstream and enjoys a large, popular following, chances are better that you'll find the software prebuilt and ready to use. Otherwise, it's time to roll up your sleeves and prepare to build the software yourself.
Yes, young Jedi, it's time to use the source code.
Like lifting an X-wing fighter from a swamp, building software from source might seem intimidating at first, especially if you're not a software developer. In fact, in most cases, the entire process takes but a handful of commands, and the rest is automated.
To be sure, some programs are complex to build—or take hours to build—and require manual intervention along the way. However, even these programs are typically constructed from smaller pieces that are simple to build. It's the number of dependencies and the sequence of construction that complicate the build process. Some programs also have oodles of features that you might or might not want. For instance, you can build PHP to interoperate with the new Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) Internet addressing scheme. If your network has yet to adopt IPv6, there's no need to include that feature. Vetting a plethora of options adds effort to the build process.
This month, examine how to build a typical UNIX software application. Before you
proceed, make sure that your system has a
such as the GNU Compiler Collection, and the suite of common UNIX software
development tools, including
awk. In addition, ensure that all the development tools
are in your PATH environment variable.
Good things come in software packages
As an illustrative and representative example, let's configure, build, and install SQLite—a small library that implements a Structured Query Language (SQL) database engine. SQLite requires no configuration to use and can be embedded in its entirety in any application, and databases are contained in a single file. Many programming languages can call SQLite to persist data. SQLite also includes a command-line utility aptly named sqlite3 that manages SQLite databases.
To begin, download SQLite (see Resources). Pick the most current source code bundle, and download it to your machine. (As of this writing, the most recent version of SQLite was version 3.3.17, released on 25 April 2007.) This example uses the file stored as http://www.sqlite.org/sqlite-3.3.17.tar.gz.
When you have the file, unpack it. The .tar.gz extension reflects how the archive was constructed. In this case, it's a gzipped, tar archive. The latter extension, .gz, stands for gzip (compression); the former extension, .tar, stands for tar (an archive format). To extract the contents of the archive, simply process the file in reverse order—first extracting it and then opening the archive:
$ gunzip sqlite-3.3.17.tar.gz $ tar xvf sqlite-3.3.17.tar
These two commands create a replica of the original source code in a new
directory named sqlite-3.3.17. By the way, the .tar.gz file format is quite
common (it's called a tarball), and you can unpack a tarball using the
tar command directly:
$ tar xzvf sqlite-3.3.17.tar.gz
This single command is equivalent to the two previous commands.
Next, change the directory to sqlite-3.3.17, and use
ls to list the contents. You should see a manifest like
Listing 1. A manifest of the SQLite package
$ ls Makefile.in contrib publish.sh Makefile.linux-gcc doc spec.template README ext sqlite.pc.in VERSION install-sh sqlite3.1 aclocal.m4 ltmain.sh sqlite3.pc.in addopcodes.awk main.mk src art mkdll.sh tclinstaller.tcl config.guess mkopcodec.awk test config.sub mkopcodeh.awk tool configure mkso.sh www configure.ac notes
The source code and supplemental files for SQLite are well organized and model how most software projects distribute source code:
- The src directory contains the code.
- The test directory contains a suite of tests to validate the proper operation of the software. Running the tests after the initial build or after any modification provides confidence in the software.
- The contrib directory contains additional software that the core SQLite
development team didn't provide. For a library such as SQLite, contrib might
contain programming interfaces for popular languages such as
C, Perl, PHP, and Python. It might also include graphical user interface (GUI) wrappers and more.
- Among the other files, Makefile.in, configure, configure.ac, and aclocal.m4 are used to generate the scripts and rules to build the SQLite software on your flavor of UNIX. If the software is simple enough, a quick compile command might be all that's required to build the code. But because so many variations of UNIX exist—Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux, IBM® AIX®, and HP/UX, among others—it's necessary to investigate the host machine to determine both its capabilities and its implementations. For example, a mail reader application might attempt to determine how the local system stores mailboxes and include support for the format.
Concentrate. Concentrate. Feel the source flow through you.
The next step is to probe the system and configure the software to build properly. (You can think of this step as tailoring a suit: The garment is largely the right size but needs some alteration to fit stylishly.) You customize and prepare for the build with the ./configure local script. At the command-line prompt, type:
The configure script conducts several tests to qualify your system. For instance,
./configure on an Apple MacBook computer (which
runs a variation of FreeBSD® UNIX) produces the following (see
Listing 2. The result of running ./configure on Mac OS X
checking build system type... i386-apple-darwin8.9.1 checking host system type... i386-apple-darwin8.9.1 checking for gcc... gcc checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out checking whether the C compiler works... yes checking whether we are cross compiling... no checking for suffix of executables... checking for suffix of object files... o checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes checking for gcc option to accept ISO C89... none needed checking for a sed that does not truncate output... /usr/bin/sed checking for grep that handles long lines and -e... /usr/bin/grep checking for egrep... /usr/bin/grep -E checking for ld used by gcc... /usr/bin/ld ...
./configure determines the build and host system
type (which can differ if you're cross-compiling), confirms that the GNU
C Compiler (GCC) is installed, and finds the paths to
utilities the rest of the build process might require. You can scan through the
rest of your output, but you'll see a long list of diagnostics that characterize
your system to the extent needed to construct SQLite successfully.
./configure command can fail,
especially if a prerequisite—a system library or critical system utility,
say—cannot be found.
Scan the output of
./configure, looking for anomalies,
such as specialized or local versions of commands, that might not be appropriate to
build a general application such as SQLite. As an example, if your systems
administrator installed an alpha version of GCC and the
configure tool prefers to use it, you might choose to
manually override the choice. To see a list (often long) of options you can
./configure --help, as shown in
Listing 3. General options for the ./configure script
$ ./configure --help ... By default, `make install' will install all the files in `/usr/local/bin', `/usr/local/lib' etc. You can specify an installation prefix other than `/usr/local' using `--prefix', for instance `--prefix=$HOME'. For better control, use the options below. Fine tuning of the installation directories: --bindir=DIR user executables [EPREFIX/bin] --sbindir=DIR system admin executables [EPREFIX/sbin] --libexecdir=DIR program executables [EPREFIX/libexec] ...
The output of
./configure --help includes general
options used with the configuration system and specific options pertinent only to
the software you're building. To see the latter (shorter) list, type
./configure --help=short (see
Listing 4. Package-specific options for the software to build
$ ./configure --help=short Optional Features: --disable-FEATURE do not include FEATURE (same as --enable-FEATURE=no) --enable-FEATURE[=ARG] include FEATURE [ARG=yes] --enable-shared[=PKGS] build shared libraries [default=yes] --enable-static[=PKGS] build static libraries [default=yes] --enable-fast-install[=PKGS] optimize for fast installation [default=yes] --disable-libtool-lock avoid locking (might break parallel builds) --enable-threadsafe Support threadsafe operation --enable-cross-thread-connections Allow connection sharing across threads --enable-threads-override-locks Threads can override each others locks --enable-releasemode Support libtool link to release mode --enable-tempstore Use an in-ram database for temporary tables (never,no,yes,always) --disable-tcl do not build TCL extension --disable-readline disable readline support [default=detect] --enable-debug enable debugging & verbose explain
./configure --help, the output at the
very top indicates that the default installation directory for executables is
/usr/local/bin, the default installation directory for libraries is
/usr/local/lib, and so on. Many systems use an alternate hierarchy to
store non-core software.
For example, many systems administrators choose to use /opt instead of /usr/local
as the locus of locally added or locally modified software. If you want to install
SQLite in a directory other than the default, specify the directory with the
--prefix= option. One possible use—and a common
one if you're the only person using a package or if you don't have root access to
install the software globally—is to install the software in your own
hierarchy within your home directory:
$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/sw
Using this command, the install portion of the build would recreate the hierarchy of the software in $HOME/sw, as in $HOME/sw/bin, $HOME/sw/lib, $HOME/sw/etc, $HOME/sw/man, and others as needed. For simplicity, this example installs its code in the default targets.
Compile the code
The result of
./configure is a Makefile compatible
with your version of UNIX. The development utility named make uses the Makefile to
execute the steps required to compile and link the code into an executable. You
can open the Makefile to examine it, but don't edit it, because any modifications
you make will be listed if you run
The Makefile contains a list of source files to build, and it also includes constants
that enable or disable and choose certain snippets of code in the SQLite package.
For instance, code specific to 64-bit processors might be enabled if the
configure tool detected a suitable chip within your
system. The Makefile also expresses dependencies among source files, so a change
in an all-important header (.h) file might cause recompilation of all the
C source code.
Your next step is to run
make to build the software
(see Listing 5):
Listing 5. Running make
$ make sed -e s/--VERS--/3.3.17/ ./src/sqlite.h.in | \ sed -e s/--VERSION-NUMBER--/3003017/ >sqlite3.h gcc -g -O2 -o lemon ./tool/lemon.c cp ./tool/lempar.c . cp ./src/parse.y . ./lemon parse.y mv parse.h parse.h.temp awk -f ./addopcodes.awk parse.h.temp >parse.h cat parse.h ./src/vdbe.c | awk -f ./mkopcodeh.awk >opcodes.h ./libtool --mode=compile --tag=CC gcc -g -O2 -I. -I./src \ -DNDEBUG -I/System/Lib rary/Frameworks/Tcl.framework/Versions/8.4/Headers \ -DTHREADSAFE=0 -DSQLITE_THREA D_OVERRIDE_LOCK=-1 \ -DSQLITE_OMIT_LOAD_EXTENSION=1 -c ./src/alter.c mkdir .libs gcc -g -O2 -I. -I./src -DNDEBUG \ -I/System/Library/Frameworks/Tcl.framework/Vers ions/8.4/Headers \ -DTHREADSAFE=0 -DSQLITE_THREAD_OVERRIDE_LOCK=-1 \ -DSQLITE_OMIT_L OAD_EXTENSION=1 -c ./src/alter.c -fno-common \ -DPIC -o .libs/alter.o ... ranlib .libs/libtclsqlite3.a creating libtclsqlite3.la
Note: In the output above, blank lines have been added to better highlight
each step that
make utility checks the modification dates of
files—header files, source code, data files, and object files—and
C source files that are appropriate.
make rebuilds everything, because no object
files or build targets exist. As you can see, the rules to build the targets
include intermediate steps, too, that use tools, such as
awk, to produce
header files that are used in later steps.
The result of the
make command is a finished library
Although not mandatory nor provided in every package, it's a good idea to test the software you just built. Even if your software builds successfully, it's not necessarily an indication that the software functions properly.
To test your software, run
make again with the
test option (see Listing 6):
Listing 6. Testing the software
$ make test ... alter-1.1... Ok alter-1.2... Ok alter-1.3... Ok alter-1.3.1... Ok alter-1.4... Ok ... Thread-specific data deallocated properly 0 errors out of 28093 tests Failures on these tests:
Success! The software built fine and works correctly. If one or more test cases did fail, the summary at the bottom (here, it's blank) would report which test or tests require investigation.
A finished product
If your software works properly, the final step is to install it on your system.
Once again, use
make and specify the
install target. Adding software to /usr/local usually
requires superuser (root) privileges provided by
sudo (see Listing 7):
Listing 7. Installing the software on your local system
$ sudo make install tclsh ./tclinstaller.tcl 3.3 /usr/bin/install -c -d /usr/local/lib ./libtool --mode=install /usr/bin/install -c libsqlite3.la /usr/local/lib /usr/bin/install -c .libs/libsqlite188.8.131.52.dylib /usr/local/lib/libsqlite184.108.40.206 .dylib ... /usr/bin/install -c .libs/libsqlite3.lai /usr/local/lib/libsqlite3.la /usr/bin/install -c .libs/libsqlite3.a /usr/local/lib/libsqlite3.a chmod 644 /usr/local/lib/libsqlite3.a ranlib /usr/local/lib/libsqlite3.a ... /usr/bin/install -c -d /usr/local/bin ./libtool --mode=install /usr/bin/install -c sqlite3 /usr/local/bin /usr/bin/install -c .libs/sqlite3 /usr/local/bin/sqlite3 /usr/bin/install -c -d /usr/local/include /usr/bin/install -c -m 0644 sqlite3.h /usr/local/include /usr/bin/install -c -m 0644 ./src/sqlite3ext.h /usr/local/include /usr/bin/install -c -d /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig; /usr/bin/install -c -m 0644 sqlite3.pc /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig;
make install process creates the necessary
directories (if each doesn't exist), copies the files to the destinations, and
ranlib to prepare the library for use by
applications. It also copies the
sqlite3 utility to
/usr/local/bin, copies header files that developers require to build software
against the SQLite library, and copies the documentation to the proper place in
Assuming that /usr/local/bin is in your PATH variable, you can now run
sqlite3 (see Listing 8):
Listing 8. SQLite, ready to use
$ which sqlite3 /usr/local/bin/sqlite3 $ sqlite3 SQLite version 3.3.17 Enter ".help" for instructions sqlite>
Advice for the apprentice?
A fair majority of software packages build as readily as SQLite. Indeed, you can often configure, build, and install the software with one command:
$ ./configure && make && sudo make install
&& operator runs the latter
command only if the former command works without error. So, the command above
./configure, and if that works, run
make, and if that works, run
sudo make install." This one command builds a package
unattended. Just kick it off and go get coffee, a sandwich, or a prix fixe
meal, depending on the size and complexity of the package you're building.
Here are some other helpful tips for building software from source code:
- If the software package you're building requires more than the typical
./configure && make && sudo make install, keep a journal of the steps you followed to build the code. If you must rebuild the same code or build a newer version of the code, you can refer to your journal to refresh your memory. Store the journal in the same directory as the package's README file. You might even adopt a convention for the journal's file name, which makes it easy to recognize what you've built previously.
- Better yet, if the steps required to build the software are repeatable without manual intervention, capture the process in a shell script. Later, if you must rebuild the same code, simply run the shell script. If a newer version of the code becomes available, you can modify the script as needed to add, change, or remove steps.
- You can reclaim disk space after you've installed the software by using
make clean. This rule usually removes the target files and any intermediate files, and it leaves the files required to restart the process intact. Another rule,
make distclean, removes the Makefile and other generated files.
- Keep the source of differing versions of the same code separate. This regimen allows you to compare one release to another, but it also allows you to recover a specific version of the software. Organize the source code into a local repository, say $HOME/src or /usr/local/src, depending on your scope of use (personal or global) and your local conventions.
- Further, you might choose to prevent accidental removal or overwrites by
making the source code globally read-only. Change to the directory of the source
code you want to protect, and run the
chmod -R a-w *command (run
chmodrecursively, turning off all write permissions).
Finally, there will be instances when source code simply won't build on your system. As mentioned above, the most frequent obstacle encountered is missing prerequisites. Read the error message or messages carefully—it might be obvious what has gone wrong.
If you cannot deduce the reason, type the exact error message and the name of the package you're trying to build into Google. Chances are very good that someone else has encountered and solved the same issue. (In fact, searching the Internet for error messages can be quite illuminating—although you might have to dig a little to find a gem.)
If you get stumped, check the software's home page for links to resources such as an IRC channel, a newsgroup, a mailing list, or an FAQ. Your local systems administrator is an invaluable font of experience, too.
The source is strong with this one
If your system lacks a tool you need, you can ad lib one on the command line, you can write a shell script, you can write your own program, and you can borrow from the enormous pool of code found online. You'll be well on your way to practicing Jedi mind tricks just like me.
"This is the best article I've ever read."
- Speaking UNIX: Check out other parts in this series.
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- Participate in the AIX and UNIX forums: | <urn:uuid:42b6e871-8cac-414b-bf05-b74311854b3b> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-speakingunix12/index.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170434.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00158-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.813258 | 5,523 | 3.15625 | 3 |
By now, I imagine everyone has read about the “heartbleed” bug in the OpenSSL library.
If you haven’t read about it yet:
- There is a whole web site dedicated to it here: heartbleed.com
- The short form is this:
- OpenSSL is probably the most popular SSL library in the world.
- There is a bug in OpenSSL such that an attacker can retrieve segments of server memory from an OpenSSL-protected web server.
- This memory may contain the server’s private SSL certificate, user passwords or anything else.
- If someone attacks a server this way, the server would not log the attack – the compromise is silent.
So what does this all mean?
- If you operate a web site protected by HTTPS, with the S — SSL — implemented using the OpenSSL code, you obviously have to patch immediately.
- Anything on affected web servers may have been compromised. The most worrying bit is the server’s private SSL certificate. Why is that a problem? Because someone who steals that private SSL certificate could subsequently impersonate your web site without alerting users visiting his fake server that they are not communicating with the legitimate site. This is a man-in-the-middle attack.
- If you sign into a web site that has been compromised this way, then a man-in-the-middle attack such as the above may have been used to steal your password (in plaintext – it does not matter how good your password was). This is especially problematic in public spaces like coffee shops or airports, where a man-in-the-middle attack would be much easier to carry out than – say – when you sign into systems from your home or office.
- A server that was compromised might also leak password data. Very few systems store plaintext passwords these days, and large web sites would not store password hashes on the front-end web server anyways, so this is mainly a concern if you sign into a smallish web site, which stores password hashes locally on the web server, and if your password was a fairly easy to guess one.
Do we know about anyone who has actually been “hacked” this way? The short answer is NO. There is a great risk of compromise here, but I have not heard of any actual compromised web sites, server certificates or passwords. Be careful, but don’t panic, in other words.
How are the media handling this? As you might expect, with lots of sensational and misleading nonsense. I read an article in the local newspaper that was particularly shocking — i.e., the quality and accuracy of the coverage was about as poor as I’ve seen in recent years. If you want a chuckle, read this:
More seriously, Theo de Raadt of the OpenBSD project recently pointed out that all this could have been avoided if a security measure in libc had not been bypassed. I recommend following Theo – he’s an awfully smart guy (and lives a stone’s throw away from my office to boot).
So what to do?
- Do you operate an affected web site? Patch your OpenSSL library and get/install a fresh certificate, because there is a risk that your old cert was compromised. Good business for the certificate authorities here.
- Do you sign into an affected web site? (You should assume yes, since OpenSSL is so common). Wait a few days and change your password. Make sure your web browser checks for revoked certificates. On my Firefox instance, I checked about:config and found that app.update.cert.checkAttributes was true. That’s good.
Addendum: as one might expect, the always-brilliant XKCD explains the vulnerability perfectly: | <urn:uuid:a5fe9e3c-a256-41e2-a736-a1edb6460814> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://blogs.hitachi-id.com/blogs/idan/tag/heartbleed/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170993.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00510-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950262 | 787 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Whats Federated Identity Management?
Federated identity management allows companies with different technologies to share applications, but is it for you? Check out this Primer and download the quiz for guidance. (Baseline)What is it? A system that allows individuals to use the same user name, password or other personal identification to sign on to the networks of more than one enterprise in order to conduct transactions.
How is it used? Partners in a Federated Identity Management (FIM) system depend on each other to authenticate their respective users and vouch for their access to services. That allows, for example, a sales representative to update an internal forecast by pulling information from a suppliers database, hosted on the suppliers network.
Why is it necessary? So that companies can share applications without needing to adopt the same technologies for directory services, security and authentication. Within companies, directory services such as Microsofts Active Directory or products using the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol have allowed companies to recognize their users through a single identity. But asking multiple companies to match up technologies or maintain full user accounts for their partners employees is unwieldy. FIM allows companies to keep their own directories and securely exchange information from them.
How does it work? A company must trust its partners to vouch for their users. Each participant must rely on each partner to say, in effect, "This user is OK; let them access this application." Partners also need a standard way to send that message, such as one that uses the conventions of the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML). SAML allows instant recognition of whether the prospective user is a person or a machine, and what that person or machine can access. SAML documents can be wrapped in a Simple Object Access Protocol message for the computer-to-computer communications needed for Web services. Or they may be passed between Web servers of federated organizations that share live services.
Who is using it? Early adopters include American Express, Boeing, General Motors and Nokia. Another, Proctor & Gamble, had improvised its own federated-identity system using the more generic eXtensible Markup Language but is now moving to adopt SAML.
What are the challenges? Trusting a partner to authenticate its own users is a good thing only if that partner has solid security and user-management practices. Also, while some Web access-management products now support SAML, implementing the technology still commonly requires customization to integrate applications and develop user interfaces. | <urn:uuid:2e8e16f9-5e86-49a1-8510-9382635d7f29> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Channel/Whats-Federated-Identity-Management | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171232.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00034-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921179 | 507 | 2.5625 | 3 |
The federal government is studying a new technology that would allow automobiles to communicate with each other wirelessly as they travel along roadways and provide drivers with warnings that could help prevent collisions.
A pilot program scheduled to launch this August in Ann Arbor, Mich., will help the feds decide whether to proceed with developing the technology, which it’s been examining for about 10 years.
The idea is to equip cars with radios that can transmit up to 10 messages per second to vehicles around them using a signal similar to Wi-Fi. Cars would also be equipped with devices that can receive and interpret those signals in order to convey warnings to drivers.
Hypothetically, if you’re driving and there’s someone cruising in your blind spot, that vehicle would send a signal to your own car that conveys its position. Inside your car, a radio would receive that signal and then prompt a flashing light or sound to warn you not to change lanes. Experts say the technology could also help drivers prevent rear-end collisions, T-bone crashes, and several other types of accidents.
U.S. Department of Transportation officials are hoping the technology could be the next big thing for auto safety. Already, the country has made great strides on that front. From 2005 to 2009, the number of fatal auto collisions fell by 20 percent. But auto crashes are still the leading cause of death among people ages 5 to 34.
Federal officials contracted with the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute to conduct the pilot, which will last for a year. It features 2,800 cars, trucks and buses equipped with the technology, and eight auto manufacturers are participating. Drivers were recruited with the promise of donations to their local PTAs. The idea was to make sure the drivers frequently use their cars in order to ensure researchers got lots of data. Soccer moms who shuttle their kids to school and activities proved to be the perfect fit.
The technology would have significant implications for local governments. Traffic signals could change their timing based on the volume of vehicles on the roadway. But local governments would likely need to upgrade their infrastructure to facilitate the new technology. The feds are working with manufacturers of traffic signal controllers to see if they can arrange to have transmitters built into their products in order to ease that transition, says Shelley Row, director of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office. State and local governments likely won’t have rewrite their traffic laws to accommodate the new technology, Row says.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will use information learned from the pilot to decide in late 2013 how to proceed with the connected vehicle technology. It could scrap the project, allow automakers to voluntarily install the systems, or mandate it in all new vehicles.
If it goes with the third option, the implications would be huge. “If NHTSA chooses to go that route, the minute they make that decision, it will spark the industry,” Row says. “We’ll see the auto industry and the supplier industry move much more aggressively to make this come into being.” If the technology is adopted, it would likely be phased in over time. Newer vehicles would be integrated with the systems, and older vehicles could be equipped with after-market add-ons.
Row expects the technology to be a hit with automakers and consumers alike. Some newer vehicles are already equipped with video cameras and radar systems that try to accomplish many of the same safety goals as the wireless communication. But the radio devices might be more practical. “It’s probably cheaper, and it’s more capable,” Row says. “It can do things that radar and other systems can’t do.”
Row says the Department of Transportation is aware of the privacy concerns surrounding the technology and takes them seriously. The only time the system will be able to identify individual vehicles is when it needs to shut down their transmitters because of malfunctions, she says. “We have not designed a system to be used for enforcement,” Row says. “We worked with privacy advocacy groups from the first day of this program.”
This story was originally published on Governing.com. | <urn:uuid:f75b8294-9219-4676-adbc-4b19c4fbf019> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.govtech.com/public-safety/Feds-Connected-Vehicle-Pilot-August.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171933.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00386-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964195 | 866 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Since the first personal computers started showing up in classrooms in the mid-1970s, schools have been struggling to figure out what to do with them.
It wasn't uncommon to find donated, never opened and eventually outdated computers in classroom closets because no one knew how to set them up, use them or fix them.
But computers have become easier to use, less expensive and ubiquitous in everyday life. And public schools are increasingly seeing the benefits of bits and bytes.
In San Francisco, district officials have embarked on a 15-year plan to transform schools with digital curriculum, universal wireless access, a laptop for every educator, and laptops or tablets for every classroom.
A big part of it is training teachers.
This year, 30 of the district's middle school math and science teachers have spent hours and hours learning how to incorporate hundreds of Salesforce.com-donated iPads, already chock full of free and purchased apps, into the learning process.
Next year, 50 more will get the same training.
In one math class this year, textbook learning and solving 20 problems for homework went out the door.
Instead, the teacher told the students to create a catering budget for a movie set and present their bid for the job, said Michael Bloemsma, a program administrator in the San Francisco school district's education technology department.
The students were then set loose with their iPads to research the price of food and make a presentation using Skitch, Keynote, Educreations or Explain Everything software programs.
The teacher didn't have to spend much time showing the students how to use the apps. Like most middle school kids with an innate sense of technology, they figured it out.
The district is partnering with 3-D design software maker Autodesk, which provides training and free software to schools.
On Tuesday, the 30 middle school teachers in the first training cohort filled a conference room at the company's San Francisco office to learn about possible applications of the software.
The idea is to expose students to technology used in the workforce now and likely commonplace in the future, said Tom Joseph, senior director of education at Autodesk.
Creating a digital part for a broken pair of eyeglasses and printing it on a 3-D computer, for example, will be relatively simple in the near future, he said.
"You don't need to be a geek," he said. "You can use this in our everyday lives."
And kids need to learn how, district officials said.
Teacher Steve Temple uses the software in his science classes at San Rafael High School.
The goal isn't to teach them the software, but how to use the software to solve problems.
"We are in alignment with what industry and higher education were doing," he told the 30 teachers during the training.
And the best part? The students to a large degree taught themselves or each other how to use the 3-D modeling program. He described himself as a facilitator who challenges students to make robots or solve engineering conundrums.
"If you think you're the only avenue to knowledge as a teacher, you really have to rethink that," Temple said. "That's hubris."
Not surprisingly, Silicon Valley is paying close attention to the increased use of technology in classrooms.
Education technology is an $8 billion industry in the United States, according to the Software and Information Industry Association.
The number of education apps and gizmos or gadgets grows every day, with venture capital pouring millions into what are being called ed-tech startups.
Yet schools are not easy targets anymore in terms of buying technology because it's shiny and new, even if it might sit on the shelf.
"Education leaders are becoming more sophisticated," the association's analysts wrote in a 2013 report. "They are not looking for companies to sell them technology products but are instead looking for partners who understand their challenges and can help provide matching solutions."
In other words, schools want stuff that improves learning and won't go to waste in the back of a classroom closet or used as a glorified piece of paper.
"We don't want teachers to basically put their worksheets on the iPad," Bloemsma said.
Sales pitches are evaluated with a wary eye, said Michele Dawson, district supervisor of education technology.
"Trust me," she said. "We get a plethora of people who want to show us their products."
To be selected, a product has to meet stiff criteria, giving students and teachers the tools for critical thinking, creativity, the ability to communicate or share information and offer feedback on student understanding, she said.
But the stuff is secondary. Training teachers how to teach with technology is even more important, Bloemsma said.
"It's more student centered," he said. "This is scary for teacher, giving up control."
San Francisco veteran teacher Karen Clayman is among the 30 trainees this year.
She has always loved computers.
Her first computer was an Apple IIe, first released in 1983.
But using technology in her classes at Giannini Middle School was a little intimidating. With 35 years in the classroom, she had seen the early attempts and the resulting disasters.
This year, her students are using iPads to create class presentations, share documents and other applications that allow them to be creative in their class projects. She can see what they are each doing and control their iPads from hers or post their work on a digital whiteboard.
"They love it," she said.
The only downside is the reliance on power.
"If I didn't have electricity, if we have a power failure," she said shaking her head. "I'd have to remember how to use a (manual, write with a pen) whiteboard."
©2014 the San Francisco Chronicle | <urn:uuid:14a22b42-2145-42f1-a5f0-6de266bef7e4> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.govtech.com/education/The-Future-is-Finally-Here-for-Computers-in-Schools.html | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501172649.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104612-00562-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968809 | 1,195 | 3 | 3 |
Primer: Grid ComputingBy David F. Carr | Posted 2006-05-06 Email Print
Grid computing harnesses the power of many computers for a common task.
Is grid computing right for your company? Click here to take the quiz.
What is it? An approach to pooling the computational resources of many computers—typically, low-cost ones built from commodity components—to accomplish tasks that otherwise would require a more powerful computer or supercomputer. A true grid should be more flexible than a traditional server cluster or server farm, where many machines are assigned to perform the same function in parallel. That is, it ought to be possible to dynamically reassign computers participating in a grid from one task to another, or to make grids at different locations cooperate to perform a demanding task.
Who came up with this definition? Argonne National Laboratory computer scientist Ian Foster has been the most outspoken advocate of what he calls The Grid, a vision in which computing power will eventually flow worldwide like electricity on the power grid. According to Foster and his colleagues, a grid becomes a grid when it crosses organizational boundaries (for example, between companies and independent departments) and uses standard protocols to accomplish a significant task.
What are some examples? SETI@home, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence organization's effort to harness idle computer cycles on the world's PCs to analyze radio-telescope data for evidence of intelligent signals, is a grid based on volunteer resources. Hewlett-Packard has designed a corporate version of a "cycle scavenging" grid for an automaker, using idle time on engineering workstations to perform simulation tasks (see Reference box). There are many other examples of academic grids performing scientific number-crunching, sometimes with computers at many universities linked to solve a given problem. The early commercial examples also often have a scientific or engineering bent, such as genetic analysis within biotech firms or oil field analysis by petroleum companies. Other number-crunching applications include analytic models run by financial institutions.
What about similar buzzwords? There's a lot of overlap, particularly with concepts such as utility computing and on-demand computing. However, utility computing is also associated with a particular business model where users or organizations only pay for the computer cycles they use. On-demand computing allows the amount of computing power available to applications or organizations to expand and contract based on demand.
Similarly, many grid computing standardization efforts focus on using XML Web services to let nodes in a grid communicate with each other. And service-oriented architecture (SOA) is often mentioned as being complementary to grid computing because defining the components of a system as loosely coupled services is one way of dividing up the processing workload between nodes. However, a system built around SOA principles and Web services is not necessarily a grid, and not all grids incorporate Web services.
Where do I get this technology? Globus Alliance, formed by Foster and his allies, is working on standards for grid computing. Globus offers an open-source software product called the Globus Toolkit. However, most grids today are either custom-built or created with proprietary technology from vendors such as Platform Computing and United Devices. Sun Microsystems offers racks of computers pre-configured for grid computing, and will sell you time on The Sun Grid, a utility computing offering. IBM and HP offer their own assortments of hardware, software, utility computing and consulting.
In addition, SAS has produced a grid version of its statistical analysis package, in partnership with Platform Computing, and SAP is also grid-enabling some of its software. | <urn:uuid:0ba800ca-5331-422d-a122-cf445d94e0e4> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Tools-Primers-hold/Primer-Grid-Computing | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171646.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00558-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947946 | 729 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Execute a Dynamic Select Statement
To execute a dynamic SELECT statement, use one of the following methods:
• If your program knows the data types of the SELECT statement result columns, use the EXECUTE IMMEDIATE statement with the INTO clause to execute the select. EXECUTE IMMEDIATE defines a select loop to process the retrieved rows.
• If your program does not know the data types of the SELECT statement result columns, use the EXECUTE IMMEDIATE statement with the USING clause to execute the select.
• If your program does not know the data types of the SELECT statement result columns, declare a cursor for the prepared SELECT statement and use the cursor to retrieve the results.
The EXECUTE IMMEDIATE option allows you to define a select loop to process the results of the select. Select loops do not allow the program to issue any other SQL statements while the loop is open. If the program must access the database while processing rows, use the cursor option.
Details about these options are found in When Result Column Data Types Are Known
(see Unknown Result Column Data Types
) and When Result Column Data Types Are Unknown
(see How Unknown Result Column Data Types are Handled
To determine whether a statement is a select, use the PREPARE and DESCRIBE statements. A REPEATED SELECT statement can be prepared only if it is associated with a cursor.
The following code demonstrates the use of the PREPARE and DESCRIBE statements to execute random statements and print results. This example uses cursors to retrieve rows if the statement is a select.
statement_buffer = ' ';
loop while reading statement_buffer from terminal
exec sql prepare s1 from :statement_buffer;
exec sql describe s1 into :rdescriptor;
if sqlda.sqld = 0 then
exec sql execute s1;
/* This is a SELECT */
exec sql declare c1 cursor for s1;
exec sql open c1;
allocate result variables using
loop while there are more rows in the cursor
exec sql fetch c1 using descriptor
if (sqlca.sqlcode not equal 100) then
print the row using
free result variables from rdescriptor;
exec sql close c1;
process sqlca for status; | <urn:uuid:c540eaa6-3b57-4a67-bb73-8dfd8fac1bf3> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://docs.actian.com/Ing_SQLRef/SQLRef_Body.1.0248.htm | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170569.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00203-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.673154 | 482 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Shortly after that magical, wondrous moment when the first two computers were connected together and a message was transmitted or a file was exchanged, the network went down.
At that moment, network and system management was born.
Prior to that climactic moment, most computer-engineering efforts were geared toward getting individual computers to work. Debugging a single computer itself is no small feat, involving significant effort just to determine the area causing the problem. If it's hardware, which component? Memory, disk, peripherals, CPU or some connection between them could be at fault. If software, which piece? The operating system, the application program, the memory manager or a connection between them could be the culprit. Anyone who has spent time on the phone with tech-support sorting out a problem with a single personal computer knows that many factors can be involved.
As soon as you network computers, the number of possible problems multiplies. In most networks, more than one vendor and many technologies are involved. To the possible hardware problems associated with one computer, add problems with cabling, routers, hubs and network cards. To the usual list of software suspects associated with one computer, add network operating systems, network card drivers and router software. The scene can become quite confusing, flush with vendor finger-pointing.
In the late 1980s, as networks and network management were developing into a major problem, several standards initiatives emerged to help vendors and users tackle their mounting problems. Some of the terminology involved can be confusing, but to be successful, it is important for IT managers to be familiar with some of the basic concepts and terms often mentioned in connection with network and system management.
Network vs. System Management
Obviously, a network consists of both the communication channels and the devices using those channels. The communication channels consist of the wires, protocols, software and devices providing the medium through which machines talk to one another. The devices using the network are everything else that lives on the network -- workstations, printers and scanners.
The handling of the network, including things like routers and hubs, is called network management. Management of the devices using the network, such as workstations, is called systems management. In recent years, however, the distinction between the two has become blurry as tools have emerged that give a unified view of both network and systems management.
SNMP, CMIP and MIBs
Two common protocols to manage Internet devices emerged at approximately the same time: the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP). Originally, SNMP was intended to fill the short-term need for network management, to be eventually replaced with CMIP for long-term needs. As its name implies, SNMP is a simple protocol -- its original description was only 32 pages -- that was easy to implement. It provides a simple query-type protocol that a network management program uses to ask devices living on the network how they are doing, how busy they are, what errors they have encountered, etc.
When SNMP was published, so was a list of information it could request from various kinds of devices. This list is called a Management Information Base (MIB). The original MIB contains a hierarchical list of objects, starting from the largest and descending to the smallest. The Internet itself is one of those objects -- at some level underneath it are individual devices such as routers, hubs, switches, etc. The MIB lists all the essential variables a particular type of object should make available to a network-management program. For example, the MIB contains a list of the variables routers should maintain and make available. The MIB describes what is available, SNMP tells how to get it.
Because network-management programs know the MIB, they know which variables they can get from which kinds of devices -- to the extent the MIB is supported by the device vendors. SNMP MIB support is nearly universal. The CMIP also uses a MIB to know what it can and cannot request from a managed device. However, it is a more complex protocol. The original requirement that SNMP and CMIP would share the same MIB was subsequently dropped and the protocols, while retaining similarities, grew apart.
SNMP is widely supported and is commonly used for basic monitoring of network devices. A second version of SNMP (SNMPv2) has been in discussion for many years. The intention of SNMPv2 was to expand the protocol and resolve some of the shortcomings of the original. Unfortunately, because of the additions and extensions to the original SNMP, it probably should no longer be called "simple."
DMI and MIF
While MIBs describe network type of devices and the information they will make available to management protocols such as SNMP and CMIP, the Desktop Management Interface (DMI) helps solve the problem of how to manage individual desktop computers.
DMI is an agent, i.e., "a program that performs some information gathering or processing task in the background. Typically, an agent is a given a very small and well-defined task" . It runs on a PC and accesses a locally kept Management Interface File (MIF) containing descriptions of all the devices in the computer that can be managed. Hardware vendors, such as disk or network-card makers, provide information about their products that gets stored in the MIF. Management programs then make a request to DMI to retrieve the information on individual components. Because DMI provides a standard interface, management programs do not have to keep track of how to get information on a particular component -- they just need to "speak DMI." DMI gets the requested information out of the MIF and returns it to the requester. This data can be used for such things as taking inventory of workstation hardware.
DMI has also been extended to manage MIF information provided by software vendors, thereby making software part of the overall management picture.
Frameworks and Agents
System and network management are complex and ever-changing. Many tools are on the market for tackling them. Tools such as Visio Enterprise extend an existing core graphical technology to help administrators build physical or logical maps of their networks. These kinds of programs can be very helpful in tracking what exists, and where and how things are connected. In the case of Visio Enterprise, the network mapping functionality is part of a suite of related tools that help IT administrators graphically represent and manage the enterprise.
However, the larger trend in network and system management is toward the development of management frameworks. The two best known are HP's OpenView and IBM/Tivoli's Management Framework. Both include the concept of a management console or workstation used by an administrator to view and manage the network and the objects living on it -- the managed objects.
Both supply a framework in which management tools can operate. The framework provides basic services, such as a unified look and feel, a central database for storing information about managed objects and the underlying mechanism for communicating to the managed objects or to other management consoles. A vendor may develop a program to manage a new kind of high-speed communication device. Instead of having to develop a whole new standalone product, the vendor can write the management tool so it will "snap in" to the existing management framework. As a snap-in, the program can take advantage of the framework's basic services. The vendor is saved the time and expense of building an infrastructure for the tool and the end user is saved the headache of having to learn a new interface and communication scheme.
Both OpenView and TME also provide a growing set of tools that live inside the framework. The tools can do such things as generate a map of network devices, monitor SNMP variables, report when a variable reaches or exceeds a threshold set by the administrator and help isolate network and performance bottlenecks.
Both platforms also provide agents that can be installed on workstations or network servers. These agents independently monitor the devices on which they are installed, only reporting items of particular note to the management console. This approach helps alleviate unnecessary network traffic that could occur if thousands of workstations were sending routine information to a central management console. In many cases, the agents can be configured to repair common problems.
Deciding whether the HP or IBM framework is best depends on a close examination of the existing network and the exact management requirements. Neither solution is inexpensive -- both in initial cost and in the expertise it takes to learn and use the system effectively. However, both are far cheaper than the astronomical costs associated with an unmanaged, unmonitored large network.
The good news about that first network that went down is that the engineers located the problem pretty quickly -- after all, there were only two computers involved -- and the network came back up in short order. Not only did it come back up, but it came back up more solidly than before and stayed up longer.
In what seems like a couple of days later, we had the Internet and large agency intranets. Today, network equipment is far more stable and reliable than it used to be, but because networks are so much larger, it sometimes is harder to isolate the problem.
Fortunately, as networks have grown, so too have the options for managing those networks. For those buried under large, unmanaged networks, the appearance of such tools has come none too soon.
David Aden is a senior consultant for webworld studios, an application-development consultancy in Northern Virginia. Email | <urn:uuid:dfa40589-af83-437c-b5db-90096ac3c8b4> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.govtech.com/magazines/gt/Local-jurisdictions-have-been-dealing-with.html?page=3 | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171053.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00555-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951476 | 1,928 | 3.1875 | 3 |
Conventional wisdom informs us that innovation leads to society’s well-being by fostering things like economic growth and higher living standards. It’s pretty much accepted that technology advancements in industrialization, computers, medical technology, and business practices are the big drivers. Economists also claim that innovation drives a specific aspect of economic strength, called productivity.
Or at least it should. An article this week in Technology Review points out that at least one innovation measure is on the decline. Researchers have noticed that since the 1973, US productivity growth has started to flatten.
Tyler Cowen, Professor of Economics, at George Mason calls it the “The Great Stagnation,” which conveniently is the same title as the book he authored. Cowen and others use a measurement called total factor productivity (TFP), which according to Wikipedia ”accounts for effects in total output not caused by inputs.” Basically it’s a metric for how efficiently the economic inputs are utilized for production. The idea is that this reflects the rate of technological advancement, aka innovation.
The chart below tells the sad tale:
The graphic is from a recent report (PDF) compiled by The Hamilton Project that tries to make some sense of what’s happening to innovation in the US. I have several problems with the report, but most of it is centered on the linkage between this TFP metric and innovation.
Anecdotally, having lived through both the pre-70s and post-70s, I can say with a fair amount of confidence that innovation in the latter era has been a lot more impressive than in the former. And not just innovation, but the rate of innovation.
From post-WWII to the 70s, the biggest advancements were the establishment of personal transportation in the modern automobile and the spread of television as the dominant media. It allowed people and goods to be transported freely across the country — at least where the roads go — and enabled near universal access to entertainment and news from homes. Not bad.
But since the 70s we’ve seen the rise of personal and mobile computing, the internet, genetic sequencing (and molecular-based medicine, in general), as well as my favorite and yours, high performance computing. So today, nearly any type of information accumulated by society can be accessed and manipulated from anywhere. To me, that’s more impressive than a 56 Chevy and a 19-inch black and white.
It also should be pointed out that even useful innovation is often ignored. Obviously in that case, it can’t get reflected in productivity. This may be especially true when the rate of innovation is so high that it’s hard for people or businesses to know when to hop aboard.
Some sectors tend to adopt technology quicker than others. For example, manufacturing and biotech have not embraced HPC with nearly the enthusiasm of say, academia and government research. And on the more personal level, technologies like VoIP, (which, as a Skype user, I can attest is a tremendous productivity booster), has yet to be picked up en masse. The reasons for resisting new technologies can be financial, educational or cultural, but they certainly play a big part in adoption.
Then there’s just the more general question whether innovation can exist independently of an economy’s productivity. Some observers have noticed that the flattening of the TFP slope after 1973 coincides with the US government’s abandonment of Keynesian economic policy (run deficits when the private sector cut back, otherwise run surpluses). The implication here is that productivity is more likely to correlate to government spending habits.
On that note, it might be worthwhile to look at what the government is spending its money on. Certainly we’ve seen funding for defense and entitlements — two areas unlikely to contribute to much to either innovation or productivity — increase substantially in the past four decades. Meanwhile US investments in R&D as a percent of GDP dropped from 2.2 percent in 1964 to about 1 percent today. But that in itself is no guarantee, given that R&D spending was below 1 percent in the 1950s, when TFP was doing just dandy.
Then there’s the observant economist who noticed that the TFP for durable goods actually increased during the past four decades, compared to the pre-70s pace. At the same time, the TFP for non-durable goods, which includes the service sector, actually flattened out (it was never very steep to begin with). Since the service sector has grown disproportionally to the durable goods sector, the overall slope of the TFP has flattened.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t do better in the innovation arena. But I do see the problem more as one of adoption than any perceived decline in innovation itself. Again, HPC users could be viewed as a microcosm of the problem. The technology has a good track record for improving productivity, with enough case studies to choke a modest-sized library. Innovation here comes in many forms — accelerators (GPUs and FPGAs), architectures (clusters, SMP machines, and exotics), and software (MPI, OpenMP, CUDA, OpenCL, and so on). The array of choices is overwhelming to the HPC newbie. Here, as elsewhere, understanding the technology is going to be the key to productivity.
In any case, be wary of reports that claim innovation is in trouble. Economists have a propensity to forecast doom scenarios, which is why economics is often referred to as the dismal science. They also love to uncover correlations like this, since that is the lifeblood of their field. But understanding the interplay between technology, economics and society is a daunting task, filled with variables that, frankly, no one fully understands. | <urn:uuid:3687940f-9c0a-44f9-9a31-0a13c0417e3b> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://www.hpcwire.com/2011/08/11/raining_on_the_innovation_parade/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501172831.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104612-00607-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953681 | 1,194 | 2.75 | 3 |
Size, Speed of Data Transfer Increasing
Indiana University (IU) is looking to widen lanes and raise the speed limit on the information superhighway — it recently introduced the Data Capacitor, a file system designed to store and manipulate large data sets.
The Data Capacitor has a single-client-transfer rate of 977 megabytes per second across the TeraGrid network, which is an open scientific discovery infrastructure that combines large computing resources at nine sites (such as supercomputer centers and universities) partnered with the National Science Foundation to create a geographically diverse computational resource.
Work on the Data Capacitor began with a grant of $1.72 million from the National Science Foundation in late 2005. Steven Simms, Data Capacitor project leader, said the idea behind the system was to create a facility that would do three things: provide large storage, provide fast storage and provide researchers with a way to find large data sets after transfer.
“The premise is that digital instruments these days, including machines that are producing simulation data, produce that data at an alarming rate,” Simms said. “I like to call it the ‘data fire hose.’ If you’re going to capture the data, that means you’ve got to be able to ingest that data quickly, and if your simulations are running for a long time, you’ve got to have hundreds of terabytes of space to accommodate multiple streams of this kind of data from different departments. So, we set down this path: We started mounting the file system on multiple locations, tying local resources together.”
This is where the TeraGrid comes into play.
“The idea is that by having this across a wide area, it frees you up from the overhead of data transfer, so you don’t necessarily have to at every step of your work flow control the speed of someone else’s schedule,” Simms said. “You can’t necessarily control how fast your network is going to go, so you have this vast data reservoir or ‘data parking lot’ where you push your data temporarily so that you can inject it someplace else. Your services don’t have to push the data from resource to resource. It saves you time — the data’s already there.”
The system’s speed and efficiency have the potential to change how scientists collaborate across great distances, exponentially enhancing that process.
Simms described a hypothetical scenario in which a scientific instrument is in one location, and a researcher far from the instrument wants to use it to harvest data.
“[Using the Data Capacitor through the TeraGrid network] it would be possible for them to send small messages to that instrument, and then the instrument could blow data to a shared file space,” Simms said. “The data would then leave the instrument and be able to be written quickly to this central file system. Then, the researcher at a remote point could mount that file system and pull that data, analyze that data or compute against that data seamlessly.”
Simms said this system potentially can affect a broad range of scientific disciplines, citing archeological image preservation and astronomy as examples — he relayed a news story about an astronomer who was working on a particular project and complained that pushing a terabyte worth of data was going to take him 30 days.
“I thought, ‘That’s a crime,’” Simms said. “We can do it across the TeraGrid network in 20 minutes.” | <urn:uuid:aa46bd50-be6d-4d67-b9f0-ef7b8f116c0f> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://certmag.com/size-speed-of-data-transfer-increasing/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501174215.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104614-00131-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935612 | 744 | 3.140625 | 3 |
There’s little doubt that “big data” is the latest “big thing” in the IT industry. But for many small and medium business (SMB) decision-makers, big data is a somewhat fuzzy term. Ask any number of them what big data means, and you’re likely to get different definitions. Making matters worse, the “big” in big data, along with endless discussions of petabytes and zettabytes, make many SMBs skeptical that big data is relevant for their businesses.
So it’s not hard to make the case that “big data” is has become an over-hyped and poorly understood catch-all phrase. What does big data really mean, and what are the implications for SMBs? When we parse through the underlying trends and hype surrounding big data, what’s left that is actually important and relevant for SMBs?
The Realities Driving Big Data Buzz
The big part of big data is easy to understand. Basically, the volume and variety of digitized data is increasing exponentially. Think about how much and how many kinds of information have moved from physical to digital form just over the last several years. Doctors have moved from paper charts to electronic medical records; merchants have moved from paper credit card imprinters to POS terminals to virtual terminals to mobile payment devices. Movies have moved from Blockbuster to Netflix; and photos have move from Kodak to Facebook and Instagram. “Smart” machines–from traffic sensors to seismographs–are creating entirely new digital data streams as well.
As a result, researchers report that we have already created 2.5 quintillion bytes of data, and that 90% of it has been generated in the last two years alone. While quintillions are hard to wrap your head around, these facts make the concept more accessible:
- 150,000 new URLs are created each day.
- Twitter sees roughly 58 million tweets every day, and has more than 554 million accounts.
- 160 million emails are sent every 60 seconds.
- Over 20 billion credit card payments are processed annually in the U.S.
- Power companies are moving from physical meter to digital “smart” meter readings, and going from monthly reading to gathering meter information every 15 minutes. This adds up to 96 million reads per day for every million meters–or a 3,000-fold increase in data.
The term “big data” refers to having the ability to dig in to this growing data avalanche more effectively and quickly with tools that make it easier to store, manage, analyze and act on information.
Big is Relative When It Comes to Big Data
According to findings from the IBM Institute for Business Value and Said Business School, University of Oxford, most large enterprises define the “big” in big data as databases with more than 100 terabytes, while most midmarket companies (less than 1,000 employees) consider anything more than 1 terabyte as “big”.
The fact of the matter is, “big” is a relative term–relative to the amount of information that your organization needs to sift through to find the insights you need to operate the business more proactively and profitably. Basically, if the data set is too big for your company to effectively manage and get insights from, then you’re facing a big data challenge.
This isn’t just a large enterprise problem. In SMB Group studies, SMB decision-makers repeatedly cite “getting better insights from the data we already have” as a top business challenge. SMBs may not be dealing with terabytes of data, but many are finding that tools that used to suffice–such as Excel spreadsheets–fall short even when it comes to analyzing internal transactional databases.
Welcome to the Insight Economy
Business that can find the right needles in the data haystack more quickly, easily and reliably than competitors can reap enormous market advantages. SMB Group’s 2012 Routes to Market Study shows that SMBs that have deployed business intelligence and analytics solutions are 51% more likely than peers to expect revenues to rise. Likewise, in the IBM-Oxford University study, three out of five midmarket respondents using business and analytics solutions reported that they are realizing significant advantages, most notably to “identify new opportunities in the marketplace” and to “understand and respond to customers better.”
Take the example of the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. With one of the lowest public subsidies in the U.S., the zoo needed to increase attendance and boost food and retail sales to operate profitably. But the zoo was unable to easily access the data–which resided on different systems–so it could plan how to do this. The zoo implemented a business intelligence solution to get better insight into customer trends and its own operations, and answer questions such as, “How many people spend money outside of admissions costs?” and “What time of day do ice cream sales peak?” By answering these questions and others, the zoo was able to increase retail and food sales by 35%, save more than $140,000 per year in marketing dollars through more targeted, successful campaigns, and increase overall zoo attendance by 50,000 in one year.
Unfortunately, many SMBs are lagging large enterprises in this area. The IBM-Oxford Study revealed that the gap between large enterprises and the midmarket is increasing, and the SMB Group 2012 Routes to Market Study shows that the smaller the company, the less likely they are to use or plan to use BI solutions.
Businesses have always needed the ability to measure critical success metrics and make sound business decisions. Big data solutions are designed to help businesses to do this in a world where the volume and variety of data is growing at breakneck speed.
When you look at the realities that are driving the big data bandwagon, its clear that long after the buzz fades, these realities will have a long-lasting impact on how businesses of all sizes operate. Over time, the performance gap will widen between businesses that can readily get the insights they need, when they need them, and those that can’t.
That said, figuring out where and how to start isn’t easy, especially for SMBs who are often resource-constrained. The good news, however, is that this is definitely an area where you want to take small steps first. In the next blog of this series, we’ll draw on conversations with IBM business partners to learn how they are helping SMBs to chart the big data journey.
This is the first of a three-part blog series by SMB Group and sponsored by IBM that examines big data and its implications for SMBs. In the next post, I’ll discuss how IBM business partners are helping SMBs take practical steps to put big data to work for their businesses. | <urn:uuid:31682eea-4cb1-4aa4-ad90-93770371a7bf> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | https://lauriemccabe.com/2013/04/ | null | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501174215.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104614-00131-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948457 | 1,425 | 2.546875 | 3 |
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