While the IT network segment has been bombarded with new software in recent times, Microsoft Windows Server software still leads the race. According to TechNet, 32.8% of online websites are running on Microsoft Servers. NetCraft also confirms that there was a huge spike in the IIS market share in 2014, where millions of new websites […]
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The cloud computing sector of Alibaba Group, Aliyun, has launched an artificial intelligence service that is the first of kind in China. The platform, named DT PAI, combines the algorithms utilized by Alibaba with machine and deep learning techniques which are then presented in a drag and drop interface. The platform may be used by developers to predict user behavior without the unnecessary step of creating new code. The majority of Alibaba’s revenue is brought about through its developed ecommerce business, but the group is beginning to look toward the future with heavy investments in the cloud computing sector. In July, Alibaba had dumped one billion dollars into Aliyun with the hopes of expanding its cloud services on a global scale, with extension into Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and the United States.
China is in the midst of economic uncertainty, so the developing cloud computing sector provides some hope to an otherwise lackluster second quarter for Alibaba. Alibaba has claimed that quarterly revenue from its cloud computing and Internet infrastructure business jumped over 106 percent year-over-year to $78 million.
Aliyun still faces stark competitors such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, but hopes to stand out from opponents by conquering emerging markets like the one in China and aiding the expansion of Chinese based cloud infrastructure into the United States. DT PAI’s primary technology is Aliyun’s Open Data Processing Service (ODPS) platform, which it claims can process 100 petabytes of data in six hours. (A petabyte is equal to about 1,000 terabytes. Aliyun says that 100 petabytes can contain 100 million high-definition videos.) First revealed in 2014,ODPS was created to aid processing of loan application from vendors. The platforms applications extend far beyond the realm of e-commerce, however, with BGI using it sequence genes more efficiently.
Aliyun senior product expert Xiao Wei has said in a press release, “In the past, the field of artificial intelligence was only open to a very small number of qualified developers and required the use of specialized tools. Such an approach was prone to error and redundancy. However, DT PAI allows developers with little or no experience in the field to construct a data application from scratch in a much shorter period of time. What used to take days can be completed within minutes.”
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The concept of the 1%, in economic terms, usually refers to wealth inequality; however, a recent report from CloudLock shows that in cloud environments, 75% of the security risk can be attributed to just 1% of users.
This instance, of course, has more in common with the Pareto principle, whereby approximately 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes, than anything else. Yet the report analyses a trend familiar to the readers of this publication; a key security risk when moving data to the cloud is not so much hackers, but employees and users.
The report, which analysed 10 million users, one billion files and more than 91,000 applications, found a high concentration of app users – 1% of users represent 62% of all app installs in the cloud. Additionally, if 1% of users represent 75% of the risk, 95% of users only represent 10% of the risk. The research also found that 52,000 instances of applications were installed by highly privileged users – a number the organisation claims to be zero given privileged accounts are coveted by cybercriminals.
This is the key point of the paper; CloudLock argues users are the weak point – but it is malicious actors who expand the issue. “While there has always been a risk associated with unintentional, user-induced risk exposure in the cloud, cybercriminals exacerbate concerns as they look to exploit users, often by employing increasingly clever spear phishing tactics to compromise credentials and gain access to corporate environments,” the report notes.
The report gives an example of an unnamed Silicon Valley company with a cloud deployment of 29 million files and 16,000 users. The top 1% of users owned 66% of the files, while 77% of the 800,000 instances of files being exposed outside of the organisation could be traced back to the top 100 users.
According to CloudLock CEO and co-founder Gil Zimmermann, risk can be reduced by involving the most active users in the security process; one client decreased risk of public exposures by 62% in just one day after following these steps. “Cyber attacks today target your users, not your infrastructure,” Zimmermann said. “As technology leaders wake up to this new reality, security programs are being reengineered to focus where true risk lies: with the user.
“The best defence is to know what typical user behaviour looks like – and, more importantly, what it doesn’t,” he added.
WebRTC has had a real tough three or four years, and so have those working with it. Only a few short years ago, the development world were excited about WebRTC and proclaiming how awesome it was.
You might have played with the technology a couple of years ago, only to find the extra infrastructure requirements were painful to implement and poorly documented. This probably left a bitter taste in your mouth, especially when things went wrong.
Through WebRTC, audio and video communications are being embedded more easily than ever into applications, helping carriers, enterprises and independent software vendors deliver greater functionality to their end users. With today’s business world increasingly focused on outcomes, users’ growing calls for ease of use, and businesses craving smarter, tighter integration, what’s the next step in delivering a richer, more immersive experience?
That richer, more fully integrated experience comes about through a Communications Platform as a Service which allows for messaging, screen sharing, videoconferencing and more.
In her session at WebRTC Summit, Dr. Natasha Tamaskar, Vice President and Head of Cloud and Mobile Strategy and Ecosystem at GENBAND, will explore what’s next on the horizon and how to create amazing experiences by embedding real-time communications everywhere.
There are many parallels to Google’s move to set up Alphabet as a holding company to remain at the forefront of innovation and what is required by all companies to foster innovation in the age of the Cloud and IoT. No one will argue that Alphabet was a change Google needed to make to remain relevant, fresh and innovative across a number of product initiatives. Under the Alphabet structure, Google provides operating divisions with the freedom and accountability for making decisions all while being nimble and quick on their feet. And perhaps most importantly, keeping their most creative people engaged and well…creative and not stifled by red tape and bureaucracy.
Organizations from small to large are increasingly adopting cloud solutions to deliver essential business services at a much lower cost. According to cyber security experts, the frequency and severity of cyber-attacks are on the rise, causing alarm to businesses and customers across a variety of industries. To defend against exploits like these, a company must adopt a comprehensive security defense strategy that is designed for their business. In 2015, organizations such as United Airlines, Sony Corp, Anthem and the Office of Personnel Management experienced data breaches through malware and other targeted attacks. How will your business adapt to this shift in technology while keeping its security posture?
DevOps has traditionally played important roles in development and IT operations, but the practice is quickly becoming core to other business functions such as customer success, business intelligence, and marketing analytics.
Modern marketers today are driven by data and rely on many different analytics tools. They need DevOps engineers in general and server log data specifically to do their jobs well. Here’s why: Server log files contain the only data that is completely full and accurate in the context of how search engines such as Google are crawling websites.
If a search engine spider encounters an error and does not load a page, the webmaster does not know because traditional traffic analytics tools such as Google Analytics do not track those issues. Log file data, on the other hand, does reveals what problems bots are encountering on a website – and many of those issues can hurt a site’s appearance and rankings in Google.
Link Labs scored $5.7m, which it will use to double down on product development
Internet of Things (IoT) networking specialist Link Labs has secured $5.7m in series A funding which the company said would be used to boost its low-power wide area network (LPWAN) expansion efforts.
The funding round was led by TCP Venture Capital, which included investment from the Maryland Venture Fund, Blu Venture investors, Inflection Point Partners, and individual and existing investors.
Link Labs specialises in developing IoT networking technology based on LoRa, a standard for IoT-centric wide area networks. Its wares are popular in the intelligent manufacturing, healthcare and smart metering sectors.
The company’s Symphony Link software and hardware connects a range of IP-connected devices over long ranges, both indoors and outdoors, over both licenced and unlicensed spectrum (915 MHz ISM band and ETSI compliant for use in the 868 MHz band in Europe and are capable of deployment from 137 MHz1020 MHz).
“This round marks an important milestone for us as we shift from system development, to accelerated deployment with our early customers,” said Brian Ray, chief executive of Link Labs. “This gives us the capital to expand our distribution channel and open up additional international markets and new applications.”
Bob Proctor, founding member at Blu Venture Investors said: “Link Labs is quickly emerging as the leader in hardware and software systems for low-power, long-range communications. We were excited to provide the seed round for Link Labs last year and are proud to be a major part of the Series A round.”
Link Labs is one of a small but growing number of startups making inroads in the IoT networking space, where there is a flurry of activity around developing standards to handle the communications element.
LoRa, which is developed by Semtech, is being backed by IBM, Cisco, and Microchip among the members of the LoRa Alliance, but other include Sigfox (which is being backed by Samsung) and Neul (which is being backed by Huawei).
Any Ops team trying to support a company in today’s cloud-connected world knows that a new way of thinking is required – one just as dramatic than the shift from Ops to DevOps. The diversity of modern operations requires teams to focus their impact on breadth vs. depth.
In his session at DevOps Summit, Adam Serediuk, Director of Operations at xMatters, Inc., will discuss the strategic requirements of evolving from Ops to DevOps, and why modern Operations has begun leveraging the “NoOps” approach. NoOps enables developers to deploy, manage, and scale their own code, creating an infrastructure that minimizes bottlenecks in key processes.