BizTech Brief #13
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Week Commencing 3rd October
In this BizTech Brief I have summarised some of the biggest announcements, product updates or reports of the past week.
If you missed any past BizTech Brief articles, click the link below:
VMware will sign deal next week with rival amazon web services
VMware Inc. is set to announce a new partnership around hybrid cloud computing with one of its biggest rivals, Amazon Web Services. Although the details are not confirmed, there is a significant deal that is going ahead that would allow VMware Customers to run their software both in private data centres and on Amazon.com's public cloud.
The deal is expected to be announced on Thursday 13th October at a press conference in San Francisco. VMware believe thatcontinuing to compete with AWS, it would be more beneficial for AWS to help enable VMware.
For the full article, click here.
Poor IoT security could take down power grid, warns researcher
A Security researcher has exposed a series of vulnerabilities in IoT devices says he is concerned about systemic attacks that could take down parts of the internet or national power grids.
Ken Munro, partner at Pen Test Partners, is continually testing the security of IoT devices and recently found that some types of internet-connected thermostats are vulnerable to attack.This means an attacker could take control of these devices and potentially trigger hundreds of thousands of heating or cooling systems in the same area to come on at the same time.
With vulnerabilities in wireless communications, mobile apps and firmware, there were many different opportunities for compromise, he said. His research has revealed that common IoT failings include:
- Using common default passwords
- Including encryption keys and passwords in the source code of IoT-related apps
- Including encryption keys and passwords in devices’ firmware
- Leaving Bluetooth permanently in pairing mode
- Failure to use passcodes for Bluetooth
- Failure to disable diagnostic ports on live devices
- Failure to validate input to prevent SQL injection attacks
To read the full article, click here.
Microsoft’s grand plan aims to make big data intelligence accessible to all
Microsoft wants to help enterprises make sense of their big data with the help of the software giant’s cloud, artificial intelligence and machine learning product portfolio, CEO Satya Nadella said.
humans have neither the time nor the attention spans to deal with all the data they need to sift through, and that is a conundrum that Microsoft is well positioned to help work through.
“We’ve used technology very successfully to democratise both the creation of information and the distribution and access of that information. And now we need to turn to technology to democratise creation and access to intelligence,” he said.
This process is already under way at Microsoft, where there are plans to embed its Cortana personal assistant software deeper into its productivity software
To read the full article, click here.
BizTech Brief IPEXPO
Last week I attended one of the biggest IT exhibitions in the UK, IPEXPO. There were lots of interesting vendors there with a few particular technologies that stood out to me.
BitDefender Anti-Ransomware Vaccine
BitDefender's Anti-Ransomware Vaccine works by exploiting flaws in the ransomware's method of spreading and manages to stop it from encrypting in case the malware already penetrated your device. The solution works in combination with any existing endpoint protection and acts as a last line of defence against ransomware that manages to slip by the other protection layers, even if the dropper is unknown.
Nimble Storage InfoSight
InfoSight predicts and prevents issues across the application-to-storage stack as it collects and analyses data every four hours from the customer arrays. It enables you to avoid disruption and time wasted dealing with infrastructure problems.
To read the full article, click here.
