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Will The TeraHertz Band Increase Wi-Fi Speeds?
December 9, 2016 by admin
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Researchers have worked out a way to push Wi-Fi speeds to 34 Gbps using the TeraHertz band.
While greater bandwidth in the 300GHz and above band has been known for a while it is pointless because the range makes it a chocolate teapot.
Some researchers have managed to hit 100 Gbps but when it only works for a few centimeters it is not commercially viable.
Now boffins at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have got the technology to provide a great 34 Gbps speed with a decent range.
Naoto Oshimo, one of the scientists behind this latest test, said that “device performance is almost sufficient for short-distance wireless communication such as KIOSK downloads, which might be its first application”. By that they mean that they have managed 10 metres, almost OK for home use.
Oshimo believes that this technology will scale hugely in terms of the speed as well, and we could eventually be looking at topping the 1Tbps mark.
Courtesy-Fud
IBM’s Watson Goes Cybersecurity
IBM Security has announced a new year-long research project through which it will partner with eight universities to help train its Watson artificial intelligence system to tackle cybercrime.
Knowledge about threats is often hidden in unstructured sources such as blogs, research reports and documentation, said Kevin Skapinetz, director of strategy for IBM Security.
“Let’s say tomorrow there’s an article about a new type of malware, then a bunch of follow-up blogs,” Skapinetz explained. “Essentially what we’re doing is training Watson not just to understand that those documents exist, but to add context and make connections between them.”
Over the past year, IBM Security’s own experts have been working to teach Watson the “language of cybersecurity,” he said. That’s been accomplished largely by feeding it thousands of documents annotated to help the system understand what a threat is, what it does and what indicators are related, for example.
“You go through the process of annotating documents not just for nouns and verbs, but also what it all means together,” Skapinetz said. “Then Watson can start making associations.”
Now IBM aims to accelerate the training process. This fall, it will begin working with students at universities including California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, Penn State, MIT, New York University and the University of Maryland at Baltimore County along with Canada’s universities of New Brunswick, Ottawa and Waterloo.
Over the course of a year, the program aims to feed up to 15,000 new documents into Watson every month, including threat intelligence reports, cybercrime strategies, threat databases and materials from IBM’s own X-Force research library. X-Force represents 20 years of security research, including details on 8 million spam and phishing attacks and more than 100,000 documented vulnerabilities.
Watson’s natural language processing capabilities will help it make sense of those reams of unstructured data. Its data-mining techniques will help detect outliers, and its graphical presentation tools will help find connections among related data points in different documents, IBM said.
Ultimately, the result will be a cloud service called Watson for Cyber Security that’s designed to provide insights into emerging threats as well as recommendations on how to stop them.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/ibms-watson-to-get-schooled-on-cybersecurity.html
Apple Removes Data Spying Apps From Store
October 21, 2015 by admin
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Apple has removed several apps from its store that it said could pose a security risk by exposing a person’s Web traffic to untrusted sources.
The company recommended deleting the apps but did not name them, which may make it hard for people to know which apps put their data at risk.
The apps in question installed their own digital certificates on a person’s Apple mobile device. It would enable the apps to terminate an encrypted connection between a device and a service and view the traffic, which is a potential security risk.
Most websites and many apps use SSL/TLS (Secure Socket Layer/Transport Security Layer), a protocol that encrypts data traffic exchanged with a user. SSL/TLS is a cornerstone of Web security, ensuring data traffic that is intercepted is unreadable.
It is possible in some cases to interfere with an encrypted connection. Many enterprises that want to analyze encrypted traffic for security reasons will use SSL proxies to terminate a session at the edge of their network and initiate a new one with their own digital certificate, allowing them to inspect traffic for malicious behavior.
In that scenario, employees would likely be more aware or expect that kind of monitoring. But people downloading something from the App Store probably would have no idea of the access granted to their sensitive data traffic.
Apple checks applications to ensure that malicious ones are not offered in its store. Those checks are in large part the reason why Apple has had fewer problems with malicious mobile applications in its store.
Installing digital certificates isn’t itself a malicious action per se, but Apple may be concerned that users are not fully aware of the consequences of allowing an app to do so.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/apple-removes-data-spying-apps-from-store.html
LinkedIn Acquires Startup Refresh
April 16, 2015 by admin
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In a move that could produce even more automated suggestions and tips for LinkedIn users, the professional network has purchased California startup Refresh, the maker of an app that gathers news and insights about participants in meetings.
Launched three years ago, Refresh is designed to be a “digital briefing book” that can call up online information related to people that users are scheduled to meet. The information can be anything from blog posts, news articles or Facebook posts to personal notes or favorite sports teams.
The Refresh mobile and desktop app is aimed at helping people relate to one another more quickly, but it can also be used to refresh one’s memory when running into acquaintances unexpectedly.
The details of the deal were not disclosed. Refresh has stopped taking on new users and its app will shut down April 15.
“Refresh has surfaced insights associated with hundreds of millions of meetings, and has been central to countless connections and closed deals,” co-founder Bhavin Shah wrote on the Refresh blog in announcing the deal.
LinkedIn already has an app called Connected that was somewhat of a rival to Refresh. It can log the people users have met and offer updates and information about interests shared with “connections,” which are acquaintances in the LinkedIn lingo. It’s unclear whether Refresh features will be added to Connected or the LinkedIn website itself.
“Our team will focus its efforts on providing LinkedIn members with more insights to help them better do their jobs,” Shah wrote.
Verizon Wins Top Honors
July 23, 2014 by admin
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RootMetrics awarded Verizon Wireless its seal of approval in its latest biannual ranking of wireless network performance in cities across the U.S.
Verizon ranked first or was tied for first in 115 of 125 cities for overall network performance during the first half of 2014, leading all three other national carriers — AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile.
Sprint didn’t finish first in any of the cities, while Verizon tied with either AT&T or T-Mobile, or both, in 56. That meant that AT&T was the only first place finisher in 59 cities, including major cities such as Cincinnati, Colorado Springs, Colo., Daytona Beach, Fla., Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, Salt Lake City, San Antonio and Seattle.
RootMetrics found that Verizon finished first in 23 of 50 airport network evaluations for the first half of the year and tied for first in seven out of 50 airports. Verizon won or tied at four major airports: Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and Denver.
Verizon has its 4G LTE network in 500 U.S. cities, providing access to 97% of the U.S. population. RootMetrics used devices capable of connecting to Verizon’s XLTE network, now operating in 300 cities.
XLTE uses AWS spectrum.
RootMetrics is an independent research company that uses testers driving in cars and in stationary locations, both indoors and outdoors, to conduct thousands of tests in each city to evaluate reliability and speed of connections and call, data and text performance. The company uses unmodified smartphones purchased off-the-shelf from operator stores.
BlackBerry To Patch For Heartbleed
BlackBerry Ltd said it will release security updates for messaging software for Android and iOS devices by Friday to address vulnerabilities in programs related to the “Heartbleed” security threat.
Researchers last week warned they uncovered Heartbleed, a bug that targets the OpenSSL software commonly used to keep data secure, potentially allowing hackers to steal massive troves of information without leaving a trace.
Security experts initially told companies to focus on securing vulnerable websites, but have since warned about threats to technology used in data centers and on mobile devices running Google Inc’s Android software and Apple Inc’s iOS software.
Scott Totzke, BlackBerry senior vice president, told Reuters on Sunday that while the bulk of BlackBerry products do not use the vulnerable software, the company does need to update two widely used products: Secure Work Space corporate email and BBM messaging program for Android and iOS.
He said they are vulnerable to attacks by hackers if they gain access to those apps through either WiFi connections or carrier networks.
Still, he said, “The level of risk here is extremely small,” because BlackBerry’s security technology would make it difficult for a hacker to succeed in gaining data through an attack.
“It’s a very complex attack that has to be timed in a very small window,” he said, adding that it was safe to continue using those apps before an update is issued.
Google spokesman Christopher Katsaros declined comment. Officials with Apple could not be reached.
Security experts say that other mobile apps are also likely vulnerable because they use OpenSSL code.
Michael Shaulov, chief executive of Lacoon Mobile Security, said he suspects that apps that compete with BlackBerry in an area known as mobile device management are also susceptible to attack because they, too, typically use OpenSSL code.
He said mobile app developers have time to figure out which products are vulnerable and fix them.
“It will take the hackers a couple of weeks or even a month to move from ‘proof of concept’ to being able to exploit devices,” said Shaulov.
Technology firms and the U.S. government are taking the threat extremely seriously. Federal officials warned banks and other businesses on Friday to be on alert for hackers seeking to steal data exposed by the Heartbleed bug.
Companies including Cisco Systems Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co, International Business Machines Corp, Intel Corp, Juniper Networks Inc, Oracle Corp Red Hat Inc have warned customers they may be at risk. Some updates are out, while others, like BlackBerry, are rushing to get them ready.
Tesla Updates Charging Software
January 22, 2014 by admin
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Tesla Motors Inc is making changes to prevent overheating of its charging systems, including giving customers upgraded wall adapters and providing charging-software upgrades, the electric-car company said on Friday.
The moves come after a November garage fire involving a Model S in Irvine, California, which the Orange County Fire Authority said may have been caused by a Tesla charging system or by a connection at the electricity panel on the wall of the garage.
At the time, Tesla disagreed with the fire officials’ findings, denying that the charging electronics were related to the fire. A Tesla spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a question on Friday about whether the upgrades were related to the Irvine fire.
In a Friday press release, Tesla said that its goal was to prevent excessive heating of the adapters used to charge its cars. A variety of factors ranging from corrosion to inappropriate wiring of electrical outlets can cause overheating, the company said.
A December tweak to its charging software tackles the issue through reducing charging by 25 percent if the charging system detects fluctuations in power entering the vehicle, Tesla said.
“Tesla believes that this software update fully addresses any potential risks,” the release said. But as a precaution, it said it would make available an improved wall adapter with a thermal fuse for affected customers, staring in a few weeks.
Separately, three road fires in Model S sedans caused Tesla’s stock to fall sharply in October.
The fires occurred in Washington state, Tennessee and Mexico. In the U.S. incidents, Model S sedans caught fire after running over road debris. In Mexico, a Model S caught fire after striking a concrete wall.
On Friday, Tesla’s stock fell 1.23 percent to $145.72, up from levels under $120 in late November but down from its high of $194.50 in late September.
Microsoft Updates Azure
Microsoft has rolled out a major update to its Azure cloud computing service and said that it will match Amazon on price.
Last year Microsoft announced it would preview a host of changes to its Azure cloud computing service including new virtual machine configurations, a virtual private network and a new Azure software development kit. Now the firm has taken those features out of preview and made them generally available in what it is promoting as the largest single update to Windows Azure to date.
Since Microsoft announced most of the features in its “hybrid cloud” last June, the firm said the only changes from the preview release to today’s public release are higher memory capacity and higher performance compute nodes. However the firm touted its Windows Azure Virtual Network as a way for customers to view cloud based services as if those were located on their premises.
Microsoft couldn’t rely on features alone to take the fight to Amazon and its Web Services division. Amazon’s cloud service is the biggest rival to Microsoft Azure and has a reputation for cutting prices aggressively. Now Microsoft has said it will do the same in a bid “to take the price discussion off the table”.
Michael Newberry, Windows Azure lead at Microsoft UK said that companies are in a process of moving applications that presently reside on servers located in the office onto the cloud. He said, “It is important that we get them through the process, price shouldn’t be a barrier for the customer to choose the best cloud provider.
“At the end of the day it should be about different technical facilities, what is the right environment for a particular workload, a particular application scenario. And that’s why we wanted to take the price discussion off the table and say ‘look, we know prices are changing and this is a market that is developing, but lets make this about the best environment, the best architecture, the best cloud environment for your particular customer.”
Newberry said that Microsoft’s Windows Azure service will appeal to those customers who want to make use of existing applications rather than develop ones specifically for cloud deployment. He said, “With customers who have existing infrastructure, existing applications, existing datacenters, that’s not something they want to throwaway. They still want to take advantage of cloud technologies, either in terms of private cloud, or using the public cloud as a spiking mechanism – an overflow if you will – for their existing on premise environment.”
Microsoft has also started to offer support for Linux on its Azure cloud service. Newberry said customers should have no problem running open source software or Linux on its services. However the firm does see its Windows Azure cloud service being particularly enticing for those firms that already run their network infrastructure services using Microsoft’s software, such as Active Directory, SQL Server and Sharepoint.
With Microsoft saying it will match Amazon’s pricing, the cloud provider industry might start to see a focus on performance rather than simply competing on low prices to attract customers.
IBM Beefs Up
IBM is unveiling a new version of its Connections enterprise social networking (ESN) software, which businesses use to give their employees social media capabilities adapted for workplace collaboration, such as employee profiles and blogging.
Enhancements in IBM Connections 4.0 include a more interactive activity stream, broader support for mobile devices, more granular usage analytics and integration with email and calendar systems, according to Heidi Ambler, director of product management for IBM Social Software. It is available immediately.
“This new release helps customers grasp the power of social analytics, gives them anytime-anywhere access to the software and provides cutting-edge capabilities,” she said.
Instead of a list-like news feed, the new software has an activity stream in employee profiles that users can filter for relevance, as well as act on the notifications right from the Connections interface.
For example, users can trigger pop-up boxes from the activity stream notifications and see the latest comments made about a file, see who posted the latest version of it and add tags to it.
An integration with IBM’s own Lotus Notes-Domino and with Microsoft’s Outlook-Exchange email and calendar systems lets users manage email messages through Connections.
Cisco Hits 50 Million Milestone For Its IP Phones
April 26, 2012 by admin
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Cisco Wednesday announced Wednesday that it has sold its 50 millionth IP phone, a significant increase in just two years when 30 million were sold.
The switching technology giant today also said it will make software for presence, instant messaging and Cisco Jabber IM clients available for free to its Unified Communications Manager customers.
The latter move means organizations with UCM can roll out presence and IM to employees simply and cheaply to smartphones and tablets running various operating systems, Barry O’Sullivan, senior vice president of Cisco’s voice technology group, said in a blog post.
The supported OSs include Windows, Mac, iPad, Cisco Cius, iPhone, BlackBerry and, later in 2012, Android, O’Sullivan said.
The move helps companies “deploy a unified communications client that is BYOD-ready,” he added. BYOD refers to Bring Your Own Device, a trend where companies allow workers to use devices of their choosing to connect to company data wirelessly.