Tech News Recap for the Week of 2/29/2016

Were you busy this week? Here’s a tech news recap of articles you may have missed for the week of 2/29/2016!

Interesting statistics were released in the 2016 State of IT report. UC Berkeley made its 3rd data breach disclosure in the past 15 months. The EU has approved the Dell buyout of EMC. Cisco has aquired cloud management startup CliQr for $260 million to bolster its software defined networking strategy. At the RSA conference, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger discussed executive changes at VMware, implications of the Dell-EMC merger, and his focus around security. Microsoft continues to support Apple against the FBI, The US Department of Defense is searching for hackers to find and fix security vulnerabilities in its system, and more top news from this week! 

Tech News Recap

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By Ben Stephenson, Emerging Media Specialist

 

The cloud is becoming more secure – but it’s still costly to keep it that way

(c)iStock.com/RyanKing999

Fears over cloud security will continue to linger, but the situation is improving: almost two thirds (64%) of enterprises polled by analyst house Clutch argue cloud infrastructure is more secure than legacy systems.

36% of the 300 respondents polled said cloud was much more secure than legacy infrastructure, compared to 28% who argued it was “somewhat” more secure. Only 11% of respondents argued cloud was in any way less secure, with 1% saying it was ‘much less’.

Yet the majority of respondents don’t entirely trust their chosen vendor; three quarters of respondents say they add in their own security on top of the vendor’s solution. Additional security measures enterprises put in range from data encryption (61%), to identity access policies (52%), and regular audits (48%). More than half of enterprises polled say they spend between $10,000 and $50,000 on these measures.

Clutch argues cloud infrastructure offers three features which makes it more secure for enterprises; the infrastructure is monitored at all times, the security features are multi-faceted, and central management ensures security systems remain up to date at all times. “Legacy systems are more difficult to keep updated because enterprises may have to go around to several hundred thousand platforms to check and update security systems,” said cloud analyst David Linthicum. “It’s easier for legacy systems to fall behind in terms of updates.”

Yet security remains the biggest issue companies have encountered with cloud infrastructure in the past year. 31% of those polled cited it, ahead of training (28%), increased cost (28%), and downtime (25%). For Jason Reichl, CEO of Go Nimbly, IT teams struggle when more transparency is required. “Because of this, the IT team needs to build new security policies to create the impression that a business is investing a lot more resources in security,” he said. “Truthfully though, a company should already have had these security measures in place.”

You can find out more about the report here.

Hybrid Cloud Study | @CloudExpo @IBMCAI #Cloud #BigData #IoT #API

Two-thirds of organizations implementing hybrid cloud report they’re already gaining competitive advantage from their hybrid environments and are nearly three times as likely to use it to assemble data assets or monetize data, according to findings released by IBM (NYSE: IBM).
With a hybrid cloud approach, organizations can be selective about when to use cloud and when to use traditional IT infrastructure – delivering the best functionality while meeting speed and flexibility needs, as well as resiliency, security and regulatory requirements.

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IoT Security: Five Fundamentals | @ThingsExpo #BigData #IoT #IIoT #M2M

A key and wide-ranging tech trend that’s affecting enterprises and consumers alike is the Internet of Things (IoT). It’s a development that’s already transforming how we work and live as entrepreneurial minds continue to create use cases for billions of connected things.
Transformations of this magnitude come with growing pains. Gartner recently revealed unexpected implications arising from the IoT, pointing out that by 2020, firms will have increased annual security budgets by 20 percent (up from less than one percent in 2015) in order to address security compromises in the IoT. Even more disturbing is that Gartner expects that a black market exceeding $5 billion will exist to sell fake sensor and video data that enables criminal activity by 2020.

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Benefits and Security for IIoT Communications | @ThingsExpo #IoT #IIoT #M2M

*This is part of a series of blogs examining Sensor-2-Server (S2S) communications, development, security and implementation.
For the past two weeks, we’ve taken an in-depth look at what Sensor-2-Server communications are, how to implement these systems, and some of the specific aspects of communication that these systems facilitate. This week, for our final installment, we’ll examine some of the benefits, as well as security considerations, for S2S communications.

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Leveraging the Power of Social Media as a Marketing Tool By @Dana_Gardner | @CloudExpo #Cloud

Savvy businesses are embracing social media and business networks both to increase their brand awareness and to drive sales.
The next BriefingsDirect business innovation thought leadership discussion focuses on building a modern marketing organization. Marketing today is a different game. Today’s buyers are more connected and informed than ever, and that’s creating major upheaval in the way companies promote their brands.
Social media and business networks have taken the lead in shaping perceptions about brands, products, and companies — and savvy businesses are embracing these new channels and technologies both to increase their brand awareness and to drive sales.

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Taking Back IT – DevOps: Part 3 | @DevOpsSummit #DevOps #Microservices

In my last post I spoke about the concept that Operations needs to understand and embrace the ____ as a service model (viewable here). The concept is difficult, but the reason it has to happen is that it is the most core tenant of DevOps, and it is the only way organizations will be able to truly drive digital transformation. This matters more than ever, because in the new digital wasteland we live in, failing to transform is agreeing to die.

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Top 10 DevOps in the Enterprise | @DevOpsSummit #DevOps #Microservices

While DevOps has moved into the mainstream and is no longer a novel idea, taking the plunge towards DevOps still make some enterprise organizations and IT leaders weary. This week’s Top 10 news should quell some fears, as there was no shortage of best practices and tips for a smooth transition to DevOps in the enterprise and how to sell the practice to any team. Continue reading for more on cultural transformations, tips for microservices and the emerging trend – DevSecOps.

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The Dirty Truth About Efficiency in Hyperconvergence By @ACConboy | @CloudExpo #Cloud

The business dictionary defines efficiency as the comparison of what is actually produced or performed with what can be achieved with the same consumption of resources (money, time, labor, design, etc.) – Example being : The designers needed to revise the product specifications as the complexity of its parts reduced the efficiency of the product.

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IBM, Apple combine IoT forces for sleep health study

electronic medical health recordIBM’s Watson Cloud is to be the foundation for research by the American Sleep Apnea Association (ASAA) into how human sleeping habits affect our health. IBM and ASAA have also jointly created a new SleepHealth app to encourage patients to contribute to the cloud based SleepHealth Mobile Study.

The SleepHealth study uses Apple’s Internet of Things technology and open source ResearchKit, which simplifies tasks and survey compilation and feeds its data into the SleepHealth app. SleepHealth is the first ResearchKit study to run on the Watson Health Cloud.

Though sleep is critical for physical and metal health it remains one of the most overlooked of the basic human needs and one in four Americans experience sleep problems. Chronic insomnia affects 10% of Americans and 25 million suffer from types of obstructive sleep apnoea such as disrupted sleep, snoring and uneven breathing, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This in turn can create heart disease, hypertension, obesity, cancer, depression and fatal accidents.

Researchers and physicians will use Watson to host its surveys and study exercises and interrogate the data to uncover patterns. The Watson Cloud makes crowd-sourcing data possible and creates a system of patient-led research and data-driven discovery, according ASAAs chief science officer Carl Stepnowsky. The SleepHealth app could build the world’s largest longitudinal study to collect data on both healthy and unhealthy sleepers, said Stepnowsky.

The Watson Health Cloud has opened up a diversity of data sources such as medical literature, treatment guidelines, claims data and clinical data, according to Kyu Rhee, chief health officer for Watson Health. Researchers can also opt to apply Watson Analytics for deeper insights from the data. “One of our goals at IBM Watson Health is to eliminate silos that hinder collaboration between researchers, patients and clinicians,” said Rhee.

The study also makes use of IoT technology. The SleepHealth app makes use of multiple Apple Watch sensors, such as the accelerometer, which detects movements, and the gyroscope, which determines orientation in space, to measure and record movements such as shifting positions during sleep. It also uses Apple Watch’s heart rate monitor to detect sleep. Some of the app’s features, such as the Personal Sleep Concierge and the Nap Tracker, were designed specifically to the Apple Watch as a way to improve sleep habits. SleepHealth will be the first ResearchKit app to use Apple’s new Night Shift feature that reduces light exposure before sleep.