Reto Fankhauser ist Senior Security Architect bei Elca Zürich. Im Interview erklärt er, welche falschen Annahmen ihm hinsichtlich der Risikobewertung häufig begegnen.
Energie Wasser Luzern hat seine gesamte Informatik in den Outsourcing-Betrieb der Glattbrugger iSource überführt.
Laut IHS wird Apple Mühe haben, sein iPad Mini auszuliefern. Grund dafür sei die Display-Technik Retina, meint eine Analystin.
Aastra hat diese Woche seinen 10. Jahrestag in der Schweiz gefeiert. Für den Event waren extra der CEO aus Kanada und Gäste aus der Schweizer Politik angereist. Gemeinsam wurde bei Bier und Weisswurst auf die nächsten zehn Jahre angestossen.
Zahlreiche Zürcher UPC-Cablecom-Kunden sind Opfer von technischen Störungen geworden. Fernsehen, Internet und Telefon fielen aus. Schuld sollen Dritte sein.
Der Börsengang von Twitter steht kurz bevor. Mit dem Verkauf von 70 Millionen Anteilen könnte das Unternehmen etwa 1,6 Milliarden US-Dollar einnehmen.
ICTSwitzerland hat die Studie "Die wirtschaftliche Bedeutung des Internets" vorgestellt. Obwohl der Einfluss hier grösser ist als in anderen europäischen Ländern, sei vor allem das Potenzial des E-Commerce noch nicht voll ausgeschöpft.
Microsoft hat seine Geschäftszahlen für das abgeschlossene Geschäftsquartal veröffentlicht. Gesamthaft konnte das Unternehmen den Gewinn um 15 Prozent steigern.
Cloud Computing ist in aller Munde, doch können KMUs auch von diesem Hype profitieren? Ja, sagen KMU-Anbieter, die sich auf die Bedürfnisse kleinerer Unternehmen spezialisiert haben.
Im Rahmen eines Sparprogramms will HP rund 7000 Stellen in Europa streichen. Weltweit werden es bis 2014 rund 29'000 sein. Inwiefern die Schweiz davon betroffen sein wird, ist noch unklar.
Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission this week $340,000 for "astroturfing." Specifically, the Taiwanese FTC said more than $100,000 to hire people to "highlight the shortcomings of competing products," engage in the "disinfection of negative news about Samsung products," positively review Samsung products and, (in a bizarre turn of phrase), do "palindromic Samsung product marketing," whatever that means. Samsung was fined for paying a "large number of hired writers and designated employees" to post comments in online forums praising Samsung and criticizing competitors. Astroturf is a brand of fake grass; "astroturfing" is a reference to a fake "grass-roots" movement.
Convicted computer hackers could be recruited to join the government's , the unit's chief has said. The JCR, announced last month, is expected to be made up of computer experts who will work alongside regular forces to protect the nation's cyber defences. JCR head Lt Col Michael White told BBC Newsnight that recruitment of cyber-trained reservists would focus their skills rather than "personality traits". He said: "I think if they [someone with a criminal record for hacking] could get through the security process, then if they had that capability that we would like, then if the vetting authority was happy with that, why not?
Hundreds of global organizations have been infected by a Russian botnet as part of a cybercrime campaign that could be connected to the mysterious traffic spike that hit the Tor anonymity system in August, security firm Websense has suggested. Using the Mevade botnet as its distribution mechanism, on July 23, successfully targeting a sizable number of organizations in sectors including (in order of infection rates) business services, manufacturing, government, transportation, healthcare, and communications, the firm said. The largest number of infections was recorded in the U.S., with smaller concentrations around Europe and South America. The absence of infections in Russia was unlikely to be a coincidence, indeed "the heavy use of attack infrastructure located in Ukraine and Russia and Mevade malware links this group to a potentially well-financed cybercrime gang operating out of Kharkov, Ukraine and Russia," said Websense's research note. The use of Mevade is telling. This botnet has already been forensically connected by several firms to the widely-reported and dramatic traffic spike that from August 19 onward.
It is 30 years old and dominates the word processing market, but is now more than ever fending off challenges from the cloud where less expensive and even free alternatives pose new threats, experts say. Google Docs, IBM Docs, and Apache's free OpenOffice Writer are relatively well known but not-so-well used for Word customers, largely without undermining Word's solid base. The problem for competitors is that Word has ruled word processing for so long that most people are familiar with how it works and recognize the value of using it because its documents can be read nearly ubiquitously, says Michael Silver, an analyst with Gartner. There's a core set of capabilities customers want, and they have very little interest beyond them, Silver says, making it hard for the competition to lure customers away with new features. "The problem is people view word processing as a commodity," he says.
In a rare move, a federal court in Idaho recently ordered a software developer's computer seized and its contents copied without prior notice because the developer described himself as a "hacker" on his website. Judge Lynn Winmill, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho, issued the ruling even as he acknowledged it was "very rare" and "extraordinary." Nonetheless, he maintained it was necessary under the circumstances. "The tipping point for the Court comes from evidence that the defendants—in their own words—are hackers," Winmill wrote. "By labeling themselves this way, they have essentially announced that they have the necessary computer skills and intent to simultaneously release the code publicly and conceal their role in that act." The ruling has potential Fourth Amendment implications against unreasonable search and seizure and involves Battelle Energy Alliance and Southfork Security, a software startup established this year by former Battelle employee Corey Thuen.
Microsoft's integration of Windows Defender into Windows 8 seems to have little effect on the desire of users to install standalone security software, new figures from security management firm OPSWAT have shown. After crunching data gathered from 4000 systems running its Security Score and GEARS Cloud monitoring software, OPSWAT found that 65 percent of the Windows 8 element of this sample (21 percent) were running a second real-time protection in addition to Defender. By comparison, the figures for XP were 9 percent, and Vista and Windows 7 around 20 percent, which is to say that OPSWAT at least detected some element of a second product on these systems even if it was not running. Direct comparisons between these operating systems are not possible because than previous versions, allowing users to supplement Defender's protection with a dedicated product, a simultaneity in real-time protection that was difficult or impossible in older versions. The new Windows Defender is also a completely revised product to the old Windows Defender, released in 2006 before itself being re-launched as Microsoft Security Essentials.
Apple iOS is the fastest growing mobile operating system in 2013, with iPhone users growing from 14 percent of worldwide market share in the first quarter of 2013 to 19 percent in Q3, according to GlobalWebIndex. The research, based on 89 percent of the global Internet population, found the number of iPhone users is expected to grow to 233 million this year, with iPads users estimated at 165.72 million. iOS may be the fastest growing mobile operating system, but Android is still dominating the market, with a 57 percent share. GlobalWebIndex estimates Android users will total 708 million this year. The research firm also predicts Android will be the world's number one by early 2015.
Some people think a lot can go wrong if you have your email pass through LinkedIn's servers with the company's new Intro technology. Earlier this week, the company released , a plug-in for the iPhone's native email app that attaches people's LinkedIn profile information to their emails. The service is meant to add more professional context to emails, but it does that at the expense of users' private data, some security experts say. By transmitting sent and received emails through LinkedIn's servers, which then scrape and analyze them for data, the service essentially amounts to a "man-in-the-middle attack," security consulting firm Bishop Fox wrote in a staff . "The introduction of new data sources into a medium rife with security issues such as email is a dream for attackers," Bishop Fox wrote, noting that it could only be a matter of time before someone uses the service to launch a
The Internet Archive’s new brings old software to your browser through the magic of JSMESS emulation. The Internet Archive has protected and preserved old software for a while now; archivist Jason Scott claimed back in April that the organization . Software is so transient, though. It’s sometimes hard to get a program from 2003 to run on a modern machine, let alone a program from 1983. For most people it wouldn’t be worth the trouble to, as the Internet Archive puts it, “track down the hardware and media to run [old software], or download and install emulators and acquire/install cartridge or floppy images as you boot up the separate emulator program, outside of the browser.” The Historical Software Archive, announced Friday, changes that. There’s no need to fuss with stand-alone emulators. Instead, the Internet Archive runs MESS (short for Multi Emulator Super System) with Javascript in Chrome, Firefox, Safari—any modern browser.
The watch is selling to consumers, but it isn't staying with them.
Strong earnings news from Internet and IT vendors gave a boost to tech stocks Friday, with Microsoft shares touching a six-year high. The Nasdaq Computer Index rose 8.28 points to 1896.93 Friday, less than 4 points shy of a 12-year high. The last time the Nasdaq Computer Index was at this level was October 2000, as tech stocks were in free fall during the dot-com bust. A strong , released Thursday, helped fuel the rise in tech shares. Microsoft reported record fiscal first-quarter sales, up 16 percent year over year to $18.5 billion, while net income was $5.2 billion, up from $4.5 billion. The report, however, highlighted work the company needs to do in hardware and the consumer market.
A small number of docking stations for Microsoft’s Surface Pro 2 tablets appear to have escaped into the wild months before their official release date next year—but they’ve quickly disappeared. , appearing—for a split second—as “in stock.” The widget then refreshes, however, to show that the tablets are out of stock. : tablets, laptops, and desktop workstations. “We know what a docking station does,” Panay said at the launch. “Everybody uses a docking station. But just take your mind here really quick: We went from a tablet to a laptop, and we can use it in both forms. But we can move it to a desk. Now we have a workstation PC right in front of us.”
The first of the are in the Macworld Lab, and the results show that the internal updates in new pro laptops help to increase performance in nearly every application. The new line of MacBook Pros consists of five standard configurations, three with 13-inch displays and two 15-inch models. All use Intel’s fourth generation Core processors, dual-core integrated graphics. Only the $2599 high-end 15-inch MacBook Pro adds discrete graphics, in the form of Nvidia’s GeForce GT 750m with 2GB of dedicated video memory. We have two 13-inch Retina models, the entry-level $1299 system with a 2.4GHz dual-core Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of flash memory, as well as the high-end $1799 13-inch model with a 2.6GHz dual-core Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and 512GB of flash storage. (Apple sells a $1499 model that we didn’t test that has the same processor as the $1299 laptop and has 8GB of RAM and 256GB of flash storage.) The new Retina MacBook Pros are the first computers to ship with . Macworld Lab is in the process of updating our Speedmark overall system performance benchmarking suite to version 9, which takes advantage of Mavericks and includes updated versions of the many applications included in Speedmark. With Apple releasing brand new versions of iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, and Aperture on the same day as Mavericks, we’re still in the process of updating Speedmark. For this report we’ll be relying on the results of 12 individual applications and not an overall Speedmark score.
The Internet Archive, the online repository of millions of digitized books, wants to shield its readers from other’s prying eyes—like the government’s. On Thursday night, the nonprofit announced new privacy protections to make it more difficult to see users’ reading behavior on the site, by implementing the encrypted Web protocol standard HTTPS and making it the default. Most users will soon be using the secure protocol, which is designed to protect against eavesdropping and what are called “man-in-the-middle attacks,” the group said. The protections were announced during an event at the organization’s headquarters in San Francisco. Recent revelations over government surveillance and National Security Agency programs like Prism were a major driver behind the changes. “Based on the revelations of bulk interception of web traffic as it goes over the Internet, we are now protecting the reading behavior as it transits over the Internet by encrypting the reader’s choices of webpages all the way from their browser to our website,” the group said in a Friday , pointing to NSA’s “XKeyscore” tool in particular. The XKeyscore tool, for instance, lets NSA analysts search through vast numbers of emails, online chats and browsing histories without prior authorization, have said.
What does your son or daughter want to be when they grow up? A doctor? A lawyer? An actor? , far too few are interested in a career in cyber security. And when you consider the exploding growth of malware, the threat of cyber warfare, and the fact that even major players like Adobe get hacked from time to time, you have to recognize that cyber security is a growing market. Michael Kaiser, executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance, worries about a coming shortage of skilled technicians: "Given that we need to add thousands of cyber security professionals to the workforce in the coming years, the data shows we have a long way to go in engaging young people in the idea of a career path in cyber security." At first glance, the numbers don't sound too frightening. The survey revealed that 24 percent of millennials show interest in cyber security as a profession. But showing interest is not the same as choosing it for a career, and many young people are rightfully considering several possibilities. By comparison, 40 percent showed interest in the entertainment business. Of the 14 career choices listed on the study, only two received less interest than cyber security: Elected Official (18%) and Wall Street Analyst (17%). That may reflect a lack of practicality among youngsters (hey, maybe they’re entitled to it for a little while), and certainly reflects the glorification of celebrity that pervades the media.
Finally, fans may be able to watch Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire without being forced to pay for the Game Show Network.
HealthCare.gov, the malfunctioning insurance-shopping website at the heart of the controversial Obamacare program, should be running smoothly for the vast majority of users by the end of November, about two months after its launch, officials said. , a former acting director at the White House Office of Management and Budget brought in by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to assess the site. The website is “fixable,” Zients said during a Friday press briefing. “It’ll take a lot of work, and there are a lot of problems that need to be addressed.” Visitors to the site should see improvements every week, he said. By the end of November, “the vast majority of consumers will be able to successfully and smoothly enroll through HealthCare.gov,” he said. “The issues with HealthCare.gov today will be resolved, and the system will operate as its designed to. There will be much-improved response times and fewer time outs.”
New prices on the Moto X have dropped from $50 to $100, depending on the carrier.
The PHP Group will reset the passwords for accounts on php.net, the official website of the PHP programming language, and will change the site’s SSL certificate after attackers compromised two servers and injected malicious code into the website. The security breach after earlier in the day the Google Safe Browsing service blacklisted the site for distributing malware, which caused Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome to block users from visiting it. The PHP Group initially thought the warnings were the result of a false positive detection, but a more thorough investigation revealed that attackers managed to inject malicious JavaScript code into one of the site’s files called userprefs.js. That code executed exploits from a third-party website that, if successful, installed a piece of malware on visitors’ computers. The PHP Group’s investigation, which is still in progress, revealed that the compromise extended to two servers: the server that hosted the www.php.net, static.php.net and git.php.net domains and the server that hosted bugs.php.net, the project’s bug tracking system.
. Choosing another smartphone platform is simple. Android and iOS are the leading platforms, and Windows Phone is a distant, but certainly viable, runner up. The challenge is finding a platform that can meet the same needs in terms of security, especially for companies in sensitive and highly-regulated industries like finance or healthcare. (DoD). Most companies have fewer security concerns than the DoD, so if the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy S4 will work for Uncle Sam, they’re probably secure enough for your company as well. Still, secure communications is a hallmark of BlackBerry. It is arguably the prevailing feature that established BlackBerry as a dominant platform in the first place, and it’s almost certainly the one thing that has kept BlackBerry from completely fading away by now. Organizations that still depend on BlackBerry devices are not going to just throw darts at a wall to choose an alternate mobile platform.
The European Parliament’s research department has found that four out of five member states surveyed carry out wide-scale telecommunications surveillance. In a report released on Friday the department revealed that the U.K., France, Germany and Sweden all engaged in bulk collection of data. The Netherlands, which was also examined, has not done so, so far, but is engaged in setting up an agency for that purpose. The report notes that although surveillance has been carried out for decades, there is no room for complacency because the amount of data currently available is so large. It says the current surveillance programs “go largely beyond what was called before targeted surveillance or a non-centralised and heterogeneous assemblage of forms of surveillance.” The U.K. leads the European surveillance field and is the only country to come close to the scale of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), the report says.
Salesforce.com really wants lots of developers to come to its Dreamforce conference next month in San Francisco. As in, really. On Friday, the cloud software vendor announced a “hackathon” would be held at the conference, with $1 million going to the developer or team who creates the top prize-winning mobile application with Salesforce.com technology. “It’s not going to be easy—$1 million is going to bring out the best of the best,” Salesforce.com said in Friday’s announcement. “So don’t wait until Dreamforce! You’re going to want to get started now. With Force.com, Heroku, ExactTarget Fuel, Mobile Services and more—you’ve got a killer array of platform technology to use.” Salesforce.com will also be providing some “pretty amazing new technology” for use at the show, the announcement adds.
Vendors are working on products to lower the cost of building copper-based broadband with bandwidth up to 100M bps, and are at the same time getting ready to increase speeds even further. The death of copper and the ascent of fiber has long been discussed. However, the cost of rolling out fiber is too high for many operators who instead want to upgrade their existing copper networks. The technology that lets them do that and still offer competitive speeds is VDSL2 with vectoring, which was a hot topic at this week’s Broadband World Forum conference in Amsterdam. Vectoring improves VDSL (Very-high-bit-rate DSL) performance by removing crosstalk interference. It works by continuously analyzing the noise conditions on copper lines, and then creates a new, antinoise signal to cancel it out, much like noise-cancelling headphones. In Amsterdam, discussions centered on cutting the cost of installing vectoring, with products from the likes of equipment manufacturers Adtran and Alcatel-Lucent, as well as chip maker Broadcom.
. And by that, I mean your personal information is considered a very hot commodity among people you have never even met. We all leave behind little bits of personal information with every new new step in our digital footprint: What sites we visit, what searches we conduct, what links we follow, and so on. Collecting that information is big business. Every time you visit a website—even this one—a ripple of data is sent through the Internet, often without our knowledge and sometimes without our consent. Lightbeam, a visually striking new add-on from Mozilla, helps illuminate the sometimes-invisible connections that weave our digital lives. . Once installed, users will find the Lightbeam logo in the bottom right of the browser. Clicking it will open a new tab with three visualization options: Graph, Clock, and List. The default Graph option creates an zoomable, interactive visualization of your Web activity. Every time you voluntarilly visit a site, Lightbeam records this hit with a circle icon. Lightbeam assigns a triangle icon for every third-party site actively sucking data from the page you visited. Each site you visit is visually connected with a drawn line; a purple line means that a cookie is involved in the data transfer. Each site icon will be sized according to the amount of connections, and each icon will be closer to other icons depending on how many connections they share.
. with Retina Display received scores of 1 out of 10 for repairability. That's one point lower than last year's 13-inch model, and the same dismal score as last year's 15-inch version. Though most users will likely turn to Apple's Genius Bar for help anyway, difficult repairs and replacements could be a problem for some enterprise users who might look to service and upgrade their own machines. , using proprietary pentalobe screws rather than a giant mess of glue to keep the frame together. With a special screwdriver, you can at least have a look at the MacBook Pro's innards. But it's all downhill from there as iFixit tried to remove internal components. The battery assembly is firmly glued to the case on both the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros, and it covers the cable for the trackpad. You can't replace the trackpad without removing the battery, and prying the battery assembly apart risks shearing the trackpad cable.
European Union leaders have given themselves room for maneuver in implementing new data protection laws, while pledging to introduce them in a timely fashion. All 28 leaders of the E.U. member states discussed issues of data protection, mass surveillance and the digital economy at a meeting that continued late into the night on Thursday. They agreed that there is a strong need for an improved, robust digital economy in Europe and that artificial barriers between member states must be removed to create the so-called “digital single market.” However, the meeting was dragged out with discussion on the subject of alleged illegal snooping by the U.S. National Security Agency, among others. Allegations that the NSA hacked German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone gave impetus to this debate.
If you use Microsoft services like SkyDrive, Outlook.com webmail, or Xbox Live, you have a Microsoft account. If you have a Microsoft account, you might use it to store personal information that you wouldn't want hackers to be able to get at. You know, credit cards and tax returns and such. Turning on two-factor authentication can help keep would-be data thieves out, and your secrets secret. Two-factor authentication—which Microsoft accurately calls two- authentication—is based on a simple premise: It requires you to enter a single-use security code in addition to your username and password when you log in. This can help keep bad guys out of your account, even if they get ahold of your account name and password. To start, log into your Microsoft account by visiting from the list on the left-hand side of your browser window. Microsoft may ask you to verify your identity by sending a security code to you via text message or phone call (if you provided a cellphone number when you set up your account), or via the email address associated with your account. Select the option you prefer from the list and press . You now have access to your security settings—and you just got a taste of what to expect from two-factor authentication.