We at NetworkElites are pleased to announce that we have partnered with a large, Texas based organization that offers position, velocity, and attitude measurement systems for communications, general aviation, and transportation. We will be helping them migrate and virtualize (VMWare) all of their systems to a new data center in Houston. We look forward to providing expert and robust support services!
Although there is malware attacking all operating systems, increasingly the attacks are targeting the Android Market.
One of the key strengths of Android, being open source, also provides an avenue for exploitation. The Android Market doesn’t have the stringent filtering process used by Apple, for example, meaning that it is much easier to become infected with malicious software. Google has partially remedied the situation with an Android “Kill Switch” update, but doesn’t go far enough.
Mobile security can be enhanced in many ways. For example, BES has hundreds of policies that can be controlled and used to help lock down devices for enhanced security.
In addition, here are some easy user-level tips to be more secure:
• Only download from trusted sources
• Be mindful of what persmissions and access the downloaded app will request
• Keep your Mobile OS and software up-to-date
• Avoid sites that have questionable content. They are havens for malware.
• VPN Access: When accessing corporate network resources via smartphone, use a SSL VPN connection to secure the session.
• Password protect your mobile device to avoid personal data being accessed
The Mobile device revolution has increased productivity for businesses, and made communication more convenient for the public at large, but these benefits do not come without risks. Remain mindful of these risks, and take appropriate precautions so that your mobile device, data,m and personal information are secure.
Some believe that the flexible nature of cloud computing is changing the dynamics of IT outsourcing.
In a new study from the K2 Advisory group, Chief Information Officers, world-wide, are increasingly adopting more flexible labor options.
“In particular [they] favour outcome-based contracts from firms supplying cloud services,” Dr Katy Ring, director of K2 Advisory, said.
“Whilst the theory is good, large scale uptake of these types of contracts is unlikely in the short term due to levels of vendor risk and lack of experience from both procurement and sourcing advisors.”
The study also points out that internal IT departments will still have a role. It will be their charge to ensure that cloud technologies actually are suited for the needs of their organization.
Nicola Mortimer, head of ICT and business development at O2, recently said that the cloud is changing business dynamics with a greater emphasis on flexibility and mobility.
http://www.k2advisory.com/
It used to be that even mentioning putting mission critical systems in a virtual environment would get you blank, confused, and sometimes hostile stares. Over the years, however, virtualization technology has matured significantly, and many businesses have begun to adopt it.
Part of this spur in adoption has been driven by the “cloud” buzz. “We’re telling customers that the more you virtualize, the better it will be for you when you move to cloud,” said Bobby Mulligan, director of online and cloud services at Champion Solutions Group. “At first, they’re cautious, until they get the performance matching up to what production requires. After they see that, they’re a lot more willing to adopt virtualization.”
Still, there is room for the technology to grow. VMware CEO Paul Maritz recently cited analyst predictions that over half of workloads, industry-wide, will be processed in virtual environments by the end of the year.
Some VARs are noting extreme adoption rates. Shane Vinup, president and CEO of Minnesota technology solutions provider, Cyber Advisors, estimates that 95% of his customer base has migrated at least one mission critical application to a virtualized environment.
What is driving the adoption
Vinup shows that the “tipping point”, when IT directors and CTOs get over their skepticism and decide to give virtualization a try, occurs when they see that virtualization will not hurt performance. In fact, in many cases, they will see performance improvements.
Often, virtualization is a step needed on the path to the cloud, and businesses are starting to realize this. “What’s happening is that companies are developing cloud strategies and they’re moving their whole data centers from physical to virtualized in preparation for private cloud offerings,” stated Mike Strohl, president of Entisys, a California based virtualization VAR. “This means everything is being virtualized, except for critical databases.”
Data Warehouses: First Tier is The Final Frontier
Ask most IT directors, and they will shudder at the thought of virtualizing their critical data warehouses. “In most data warehouse environments, there’s a legacy mindset of putting big data on a large physical array and physical server.
But that’s going to hold back the infrastructure from evolving. “We’re getting customers to realize that through virtualization, they’re not going to have to sacrifice performance — they’re actually going to gain and utilize more resources,” Shepard said. “It’s all about application portability and mobility, and you have to do it through virtualization.”
“We’ve done a good job of taking lot of infrastructure applications and virtualizing them. Now the focus is on virtualizing tier one applications,” says Carl Eschenbach, VMware’s president of customer operations.
Microsoft is making adjustments to its (comparatively low-end) cloud platform, Azure, in an effort to woo smaller developers. As of October 1, “extra-small computer” pricing will be cut by 20 percent. MS is also allowing users greater flexibility in how they use their cloud computing hours.
Here’s Microsoft’s chart detailing the changes:
It should be noted that Microsoft’s chief cloud rival, Amazon, has also been making changes. Amazon extended availability of its Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) service, while adding support for Windows Server 2008 R2. Amazon also announced AWS Direct Connect, which allows businesses to create direct physical connections to geographical egions via 10 GB network circuites “in order to enhance privacy and reduce network latency,” according to Amazon (Microsoft has a similarly named product — Windows Azure Connect,codenamed Project Sydney).
Microsoft, for now, is focusing on supporting developers in both private and public cloud spaces, while Amazon is primarily appealing to the public cloud consumer.
Comment » | Amazon, Cloud Computing, Microsoft, Uncategorized
Microsoft UK has promised to give its BPOS customers vouchers against future credits after a seven hour service outage last weekend.
This is the latest in a string of service interruptions for the tech giant this summer. This time however, it is being labeled as an “Act of God” incident, as human error was not to blame, but thunder storms.
A bolt of lightning struck a transformer close to the Dublin-based data centre powering BPOS, causing an explosion and fire, resulting in a total power failure.
According to a Microsoft Spokesman – “(We will) proactively provide impacted customers with a 25 per cent credit on a future monthly invoice”.
Fortunately for Microsoft, the outage occurred over the weekend. The outcry could have been much, much worse.
Of note, The SLA does not apply when the service is hit by availability issues arising from “factors outside of our control”.An interesting boast from Microsoft, and one that appears of equally dubious value, is its claim that blackouts should never be a concern for prospective cloud customers.
“When you switch to cloud power Microsoft, you never have to worry about a power outage. You can rest easy. Our financially backed 99.9 per cent uptime guarantee means a steady stream of power is pumped directly into your business at all times and include 24/7 support if anything ever does go wrong,” said the vendor on its website.
Cloud services from both technology giants went down amidst lightning storms in Ireland yesterday.
According to Amazon’s service health dashboard, there are still issues in the Euro Zone Western region, although other zones are operating at normal availability.
After the outage, Amazon was forced to recover some block stoage servers manually. Amazon said this process required some capacity devoted towards other tasks to be used, thus hurting overall performance.
It said: “We anticipate that it will take 24 to 48 hours until the process is completed.”
Microsoft released a statement on the outage which read: “On Sunday, August 7, 2011, beginning at approximately 10:50AM PDT / 5:50PM UTC, a widespread power outage in Dublin caused connectivity issues for European BPOS customers.
“Services were restored to all customers by 5:45PM PDT/ 12:45AM UTC. Throughout the incident, we updated our customers regularly on the issue via our normal communication channels.”
All this being said, some experts were quick to chime in that this wasn’t a cloud issue, but a issue inherent in the infastructure of these two giants.
Riccado Degli Effetti, of Rackspace:
“It does not matter whether the computer hardware or software you use is located in your home or office, or miles away in the datacentre of a hosting company, things can still go wrong.
“That said, there are ways to protect datacentres from lightning strikes, such as installing lightning and surge protection.
“Both cloud and traditional managed hosting have to rely on well-maintained infrastructure to function,” he said.
He also had a thing or two to say about Amazon’s response to the crisis: “Customers rightly demand a high level of service and transparency when things do go wrong. It is no longer acceptable to post updates on a web site and not communicate directly or through multiple channels.
“Outages, although rare, are painful, and they should motivate cloud and hosting service providers to improve both preventive measures and the overall level of care provided to customers. As the saying goes, lightning never strikes twice, but Amazon has been hit before, in the US in 2009. It is important that lessons are learned from these events,” he added.
Some think so, including GreenPages Technology Solutions CEO Ron Dupler. Monday he was the first speaker at their annual technology summit. He urged the 100+ CIOs and CTOs that the time is now to seize upon cloud technologies.
“Cloud is here now!” affirmed Dupler in keynote address starting the conference, which has become a summer tradition for information technology (IT) professionals trying to keep their heads above waters in the rapidly changing world of IT. “It is real. It is happening. And we all need to seize the day and deal with it.”
Dupler said IT officers who did not embrace the cloud would be left behind, and said they were similar to doomsayers of old.
Dupler, for his part, said that IT professionals who dismiss the cloud are “trying to perpetuate the past” and ultimately are either going to “change their mind” or find themselves “working in new fields.”
The Kittery, Maine-headquartered GreenPages was an early cloud adopter and has been at the front of the cloud computing services paradigm shift advising customers to move to a fully virtualized IT environment in preparation for the cloud computing services era.
Technology research, Gartner, has projected that global cloud computing services revenue will hit $148.8 billion in 2014.
Dupler counseled IT executives attending the summit to look at cloud computing as an “opportunity” instead of a “threat.”
“In the future this is about integrating service platforms,” said Dupler. “It is helping you turn internal IT into a service platform itself and integrating various service platforms.”
Dell (NSDQ:Dell) is leveraging its partnership with the Rackspace-led OpenStack open source cloud project to the fullest with the launch of an Infrastructure-as-a-Service system based on the OpenStack cloud operating system.
According to Dell, “OpenStack is a massively scalable infrastructure-as-a-service cloud solution. It offers support for existing ecosystems plus opportunities to influence future direction.”
The Dell Openck Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service arrives just as cloud technology has matured enough for customers to want alternatives to proprietary licensed software cloud models. John Igoe, director of cloud strategy at Dell put it thusly:
“This is one of the first reference architectures in the environment that can be purchased and deployed,” Igoe said of the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution.
The Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution IaaS play comprises the OpenStack cloud operating system; cloud-optimized Dell PowerEdge C servers; a new Dell-developed OpenStack installer called “Crowbar;” and services from Dell and Rackspace Cloud Builders.
According to Igoe, Dell’s new OpenStack cloud system will not cannibalize existing Dell offerings. Igoe said Dell wants its customers to have different options for moving forward with the cloud.
Kudos to Dell for being a leader in this burgeoning space.
Click here for more information about the new Dell OpenStack-Based Cloud.
Hackers at Redmond Pie gave details of an exploit allowing someone to jailbreak version 4.3.4 of Apple iOS (it is important to note that this does not affect the iPad 2 device).
Jailbreaking is a means to circumvent normal security measures in Apple devices like iPhones and iPads. It allows anyone to use applications not approved by Apple’s App Store – obviously causing great concern to Apple over lost revenue.
“Apple has just pushed out iOS 4.3.4 for the iPhone, iPad and the iPod touch. And thankfully, we have cooked custom PwnageTool bundles which allows you to jailbreak any device (except for iPad 2) running iOS 4.3.4, and at the same time preserve your baseband for an Ultrasn0w unlock later on,” said Redmond Pie’s Uzair Ghani in a blog post.
At the moment, this jailbreak is “tethered”, meaning to take advantage of it, the device must be physically connected to a computer.
“No matter how annoying it may sound, it’s better than having no jailbreak at all,” Ghani said.
This latest in a string of hacks against iOS was releaed Friday, also the day that Apple released a security patch to repair PDF problems in their Safari Browser.
Typically to exploit the PDF vulnerability, an attacker would distribute a malicious PDF via email, or social networking sites and a user would unknowingly install malware by opening it. Attackers would then have access to personal and financial data stored on mobile Apple devices like the iPhone and iPad. They could even track a users location via the GPS capabilities in these devices.
This latest jailbreak exploit is likely to spur demands for increased vigilance by Apple. Germany issued a security warning to consumers in the wake of this latest hack release.
Popularity of the iPhone and iPad is only expected to grow. We can definitely expect more vulnerability exploits in the future.