Mobile deals combine location-aware discounts with mobile marketing campaigns. What are the largest pitfalls in this promising space, though? Privacy and security issues must be addressed to assure consumers their purchases are secure and their location is being closely guarded. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Security-software company Sourcefire is trying to help large-enterprise IT teams leverage big data analytics in fighting malware. A new product, called FireAMP, utilizes a cloud-based analytics approach to let IT teams dig deep to find out the hows, wheres and whys of their malware problems. Read more »
Demand for cloud computing continues to increase exponentially as consumers, businesses and government agencies seek to defer the expense of acquiring, operating and maintaining infrastructure and applications to third-party service providers. Likewise, software publishers are finding the cloud computing model an efficient and effective mechanism for delivering their products as a service and as an operational expense to their customers. For independent software vendors, cloud computing is opening up new markets and making their applications more accessible and affordable to scores of new customers. For a multitude of reasons, many ISVs are choosing to forego data center development and are partnering with hosting providers that have the infrastructure, resources and expertise in managing and delivering cloud services. This report provides ISVs with guidance on partnering with hosting companies, establishing criteria for selecting a hosting service, metrics for measuring hosting performance as it relates to cloud services delivered and an understanding of the responsibilities they retain even when outsourcing a large part of their services functions to a third party. Companies mentioned in this report include Microsoft, Google and Salesforce.com. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Gen Y members may be natural telecommuters, as FlexJobs CEO Sara Sutton Fell has claimed, but it appears their natural affinity for mobile work doesn’t come equipped with natural instincts for data security, at least if a new survey from Cisco is to be believed. Read more »
IBM recently announced new social networking and collaboration mobile apps — specifically designed to support enterprise needs around consumer mobile devices. IBM aims to bring social networking, real-time collaboration, and online meeting capabilities from behind the company firewall and into the hands of tablet users. Read more »
Digital Reasoning, a somewhat shadowy specialist in big data analytics for the U.S. intelligence community, announced B Series funding and named industry vet John Brennan to its board. Funding came from CIA-backed In-Q-Tel, as well as some Silver Lake Sumeru partners and other unnamed investors. Read more »
The folks at OpenDNS, which provides a domain name server for individuals that aims to be faster and more secure than those provided by your ISP, on Tuesday launched DNSCrypt a new product aimed at making DNS look up more secure and private. Read more »
Security concerns are always cited as the primary inhibitor to wider cloud adoption by businesses, but Capgemini CTO Joe Coyle says the security model for the cloud is already here and working just fine, thank you very much. Read more »
Although the story is still developing, it’s clear that some phones on certain carriers have app called Carrier IQ pre-installed; the app can capture nearly activity one takes with a smartphone. Will this situation cause you to think harder about your choice of smartphone or carrier? Read more »
After you buy a smartphone and data service, what you do with the device is your business, right? Maybe not. Pre-installed software from Carrier IQ can capture every activity behind the scenes. Here’s a video showing that you don’t have the privacy you thought you had. Read more »
Today, I read a press release from Sourcefire touting its “big data” approach to security and the fact that its Immunet anti-malware-for-PCs product is now monitoring 2 million endpoints. I reached out to find out what’s under Immunet’s covers and, no surprise, found Hadoop. Read more »
With 550,000 activations per day, and 200 million activations to-date, Android is fast shaping up to be the world’s biggest OS, but that gro… Read more at paidContent »
According to one expert, hacktivism gets a bad rap when it comes to web security, but those sites generate a lot of attack data to feed security systems. However, the proposed SOPA antipiracy legislation could end up playing right into hackers’ hands. Read more »
IT services company Unisys recently released its biannual Unisys Security Index. The latest study found that many have already been victims of cybercrime, but this infographic shows that companies charged with protecting consumer data might be the biggest losers when it gets exposed. Read more »
The latest kerfuffle about alleged vulnerabilities in Amazon Web Services’ Amazon Machine Images is little more than a tempest in a teapot, according to security experts. Their takeaway is basically that stupid users with bad computing practices get what they deserve. Read more »
Connectivity changes everything. That’s the credo driving just about every corner of our day-to-day lives. As human beings, we are now connected to one another through not just our social networks but also our cars, the books we read, the albums we download and even our own health and wellness habits (to name just a few areas). With that in mind, GigaOM Pro has singled out certain areas in the technology industry where we see this shift to constant connectivity taking place most drastically. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Facebook on Thursday morning unveiled new features aimed at making people feel more secure on the ever-growing social networking site, including “Trusted Friends” and “App Passwords.” These are just the latest in a series of major privacy changes Facebook has announced in recent months. Read more »
Employees love using their own devices to do corporate work, but the practice, known as consumerization, is rife with security risks. Speaking today at Mobilize, Cisco’s Tom Gillis said consumerization is causing a fundamental rearchitecture of how networks look that requires a reimagining of security solutions. Read more »
With OS X Lion’s incredible success and high adoption rate, Apple customers and repair technicians such as myself are facing higher than usual rates of embarrassment thanks to Lion’s ability to restore your windows exactly as they were when an app was closed. Read more »
Dome9, a stealth company that aims to create the equivalent of a firewall for public and private clouds, launched the company and its product Monday. The company, which was founded last year, is just one of several cloud security companies coming out of stealth mode. Read more »
Macs are fairly dependable, but there will still be occasions when you have to take them in for service at an Apple Authorized Service Provider. This can take some doing, so here are three tips about things you might not think about when moving your Mac. Read more »
McAfee said Android took the top spot in mobile malware attacks in the second quarter, growing 76 percent from last quarter, moving past Symbian OS and J2ME. Android had 44 attacks last quarter, compared to 14 for J2ME and 4 each for Symbian and Blackberry. Read more »
Kickstarter-backed iPhone, iPod and iPad accessories really seem to have a knack for doing well post-funding, and the PadPivot I reviewed early this month is a perfect example. The PadPivot will be available at Best Buy and Future Shop retail locations beginning in September. Read more »
Amazon Web Services has rolled out a new region, called GovCloud, designed specifically for federal government workloads. The region is designed to meet the myriad regulations that government agencies must meet when deploying new infrastructure, which have proven a hindrance in terms government cloud adoption. Read more »
If you’re looking for something a little more rugged than a standard sleeve, check out the Bamboo Blackbox Case on Kickstarter. It comes in iPad 2, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro flavors, and should protect your device from even serious jerks, jolts and dolts. Read more »
Last week’s outages at Microsoft and Amazon Web Services reiterated a very important lesson in cloud computing: Even the best-laid plans won’t stand up to an act of god or faulty electrical infrastructure. That’s why the burgeoning field of cloud insurance looks even better than ever. Read more »
GreenSQL, an Israeli-based startup that offers software that secures databases has raised a second round of funding led by Rhodium and Atlantic Capital Partners. The funding will allow the company to expand to the U.S. and build products for NoSQL tools used today. Read more »
Google+ users can under some circumstances access IM conversations of other Google users. The bug seems to be related to the way Google Talk is integrated within Google+. Google has said that it is addressing the issue, which only affects users of shared machines. Read more »
Major Internet sites like Facebook, Twitter, Apple.com, Best Buy and Buy.com saw an outage this afternoon, as Akamai faced DNS-related issues. For about an hour Monday, those issues slowed down some Akamai sites, while keeping users from accessing others altogether. Read more »
Security used to be fairly straightforward — put boundaries around your infrastructure-holding business data. Today, with the rapid adoption of cloud and mobile computing and the overall consumerization of IT, traditional boundaries have become fluid, which means companies must protect the data itself. Read more »
Amazon Web Services announced a trio of features designed to lure in enterprise users, including dedicated 1- or 10-Gigabit links to its cloud data centers. AWS is doing everything it can to make its services as flexible, reliable and secure as possible for enterprise users. Read more »
The open-source, data-processing tool Hadoop is already popular for a variety of use cases that can benefit from clusters of machines churning through unstructured data — such as search engines and social-media analysis — and now it’s turning its attention to security data. Read more »
As mobile devices become more prevalent at work, the need for security continues to rise. WatchDox provides document control, tracking and security features through a web app, apps for iPad and iPhone (we covered it late last year) and now for BlackBerry. Read more »
Yesterday, Google announced a new feature that alerts web surfers when their PCs might be infected with malware, but it’s hardly the only company using big data to fight cybercrime. We’ve covered a handful of them of over the past couple years. Read more »
Web security startup CloudFlare has raised $20 million in a series B funding round. The San Francisco-based company, which has seen impressive growth since its September 2010 launch, makes a cloud-based software program that purportedly helps protect websites while also making them faster. Read more »
Apple is already working on a fix for a security flaw reported by the German Federal Office for Information Security Wednesday. The Mac maker said in a statement that it is “developing a fix that will be available to customers in an upcoming software update.” Read more »
With its new SplitSecure technology, Structure 2011 LaunchPad finalist BeyondCore is trying to prove that companies processing sensitive data don’t have to be afraid of cloud computing. The company has actually been around since 2003, but SplitSecure represents its first foray into the cloud. Read more »
As mobile devices become more popular, it’s putting more importance on the need for security. That’s why Symantec recently analyzed Apple’s iOS and Google Android, comparing the two operating systems to each other and to desktop platforms in terms of vulnerability to security threats. Read more »
Facebook has come under fire for implementing an anti-spam system that mistakenly shut off a number of legitimate third-party applications. For all the impressive growth Facebook has displayed, it looks like the company still has a ways to go when it comes to managing public perception. Read more »
The old days of securing information with virtual barbed-wire fences are over. Today, security aspects have to be incorporated into software applications from the ground floor to ensure safety. And whether an application is hosted in the cloud or on a native server is almost moot. Read more »
