Category Archives: Cloud Servers
Seven reasons parents should care about kids and online privacy – Salon
If you dont want to have the bejesus scared out of you, dont talk to an expert on kids online privacy. If you knew what was really out there online predators, identity thieves, data miners youd lock up the internet and throw away the key.
The truth is, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The internet is so woven into our lives, we need to be aware of the worst-case scenarios that can strike when were unprepared. Below are a few of those scary things that can and do happen. But with some eyes and ears to the ground, they are totally preventable.
Your kid could be spied on. Smart toys including My Friend Cayla, Hello Barbie, and CloudPets are designed to learn and grow with your kid. Cool, right? Unfortunately, many of these toys have privacy problems. As the 2015 data breach of Vtechs InnoTab Max uncovered, hackers specifically target kids because they offer clean credit histories and unused Social Security numbers that they can use for identity theft. These toys also collect a lot of information about your kid, and they arent always clear about when they do it and how they use it.
Your kid could get accused of a crime. Everyone has the right to privacy, especially in their own home. But home assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Mattel Aristotle are designed to butt their noses into conversations. These devices collect and store untold amounts of data. Its unclear what the companies do with the extraneous noise they pick up. And if its subpoenaed, they might have to hand it over. Say your kid jokes about terrorism or something else illegal; if theres an investigation into those activities, the companies might have to cough up the transcripts. In Arkansas, a prosecutor asked for a murder suspects Echo smart speaker in case its information could shed light on the crime. The suspect agreed to hand over the recordings, and Amazon was compelled to make them available.
Your kid could get hurt. With location-aware social media such as Twitter, Kik, and Facebook, kids can reveal their actual, physical locations to all their contacts plenty of whom they dont know personally. Imagine a selfie thats location-tagged and says, Bored, by myself, just hanging out looking for something fun to do.
Your kid could lose out on opportunities. Posting wild and crazy pics from prom 17 paints a picture for potential admissions counselors, hiring managers, and others whom teens want to impress. They may not care that your kid partied only that he showed poor judgment in posting compromising images.
Your kid could be sold short. Schools are increasingly using software from third-party providers to teach, diagnose potential learning issues, and interact with students. This software includes online learning lessons, standardized tests, and 1:1 device programs. And the companies that administer the programs are typically allowed to collect, store, and sell your kids performance records. Wondering about all those offers for supplemental reading classes youre receiving in the mail? Maybe your kid stumbled on her reading assessments and marketers are trying to sell you solutions. Curious why Harvard isnt trying to recruit your kid? Maybe they already decided shes not Ivy League material based on her middle school grades. (Learn about our Student Privacy Initiative.)
Your kid could be limited. As schools automate procedures, they create student records with sensitive and potentially damaging information. Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), schools are allowed to share certain information without getting parents consents. That means that an individual education plan (IEP), attendance records, a disciplinary record, prescribed medication, or even a high body mass index could be disclosed and used to unfairly disqualify your kid from opportunities, such as advanced classes, government services, or special schools.
Your kid could be humiliated. Sharing fun stuff from your life with friends is fine. But oversharing is never a good idea. When kids post inappropriate material whether its a sexy selfie, an explicit photo session with a friend, an overly revealing rant, or cruel comments about others the results can be humiliating if those posts become public or shared widely.
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Seven reasons parents should care about kids and online privacy - Salon
Nvidia’s HGX Another Arrow in Their Cloud Quiver, Says RBC – Barron’s
Barron's | Nvidia's HGX Another Arrow in Their Cloud Quiver, Says RBC Barron's RBC Capital's Mitch Steves today reiterated an Outperform rating on shares of GPU maker Nvidia (NVDA), after assessing the company's latest initiative in the cloud computing arena, something called HGX that helps computer makers to build servers that ... Nvidia Pitching AI to ODMs in Taiwan Nvidia releases a recipe to make GPU computing ubiquitous in data centers How Nvidia is surfing the AI wave |
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Nvidia's HGX Another Arrow in Their Cloud Quiver, Says RBC - Barron's
Ensuring the security of digital information – Phys.Org
May 31, 2017 Jiqiang Lu with the GPGPU used to crack the A5/1 cipher. Credit: A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research
Every day we store and transfer sensitive digital data, post personal information on social media, and provide valuable details to companies when we use their services. Keeping secure the 2.5 quintillion (2.5 million billion) bytes of data created every day from outside attack is a mammoth task. The potential for breaching security is vast, due to a plethora of available services and the many weak links that appear in the chain whenever data is moved. A further consideration is who should have access to data, taking the issue beyond technology into the social and political realm.
These challenges demand a huge global effort from computer technicians and researchers across the world. Research groups at A*STAR are using their technical expertise to monitor online services, identify vulnerable areas of data management, and develop software and hardware that keep data secure. Their work is not only defending data against attack, but also maintaining easy access to it for authorized users.
Managing mobiles
Arguably, the first line of defense against data misuse should be implemented in the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), the world's most widely-used wireless telephony technology. With a 90 per cent share of the market, around 4.5 billion customers rely on the security of GSM to protect their communications.
"GSM was first deployed 25 years ago and has become the global standard for mobile communications," says Jiqiang Lu at the A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R).
The A5/1 stream cipher, the encryption scheme that GSM uses to protect data, has been successfully attacked before to test its security, but almost all the attacks were hypothetical in the sense of their impact on the real-world security of GSMthey either required a large amount of complex data or had a long attack time, meaning they could be mitigated and blocked by existing GSM security protocols. Lu and co-workers decided to investigate whether a detailed and fast-acting attack on the GSM A5/1 cipher could reveal fundamental weaknesses in the system. Using a computer setup costing just US$15,000 in 2013, the researchers employed a powerful algorithm to explore the A5/1 cryptosystem, and obtained 984 gigabytes of information about the system structure over 55 days. They used this information to launch attacks that pulled data from the GSM in just 9 secondsusually too quick for interception by security protocolsand illustrated that A5/1 would be vulnerable if it were to be attacked by sufficiently skilled hackers.
"The GSM should immediately upgrade its encryption algorithm to a stronger one," says Lu.
Containing the cloud
While Lu's team continue to protect our data as it flies around the global mobile network, another group at I2R which includes Jia Xu is examining the cloud storage providers that have revolutionized how we archive and share data. By entrusting large organizations to store multiple copies of our data on cloud servers around the world, we are freed from worrying about our phone, laptop or USB drive being lost, stolen or broken. But how can we be sure that these organizations will keep our data secure?
Xu and co-workers have designed cryptographic algorithms for cloud storage that not only protect the integrity of data, but also control who can access it.
"The core challenge in cloud storage is to balance three factors: efficiency, security, and usability," says Xu. "Cloud providers would like their services to be almost as efficient and low-cost as when no security features are implemented, while customers want the user interface to be as simple to use as possible." The research community is attempting to identify security vulnerabilities in existing cloud services, and to design new hardware and software solutions to resolve them.
Some security weaknesses arise from so-called deduplication techniques, which identify and remove duplicated copies of the same file, allowing cloud providers such as Dropbox to save server storage space and network bandwidth. Xu and co-workers identified severe security vulnerabilities in certain types of deduplication that could be exploited using attacking software.
Dropbox disabled cross-user deduplication in 2012. However, the new algorithms developed by Xu and the team will allow deduplication to be used alongside robust encryption, thereby improving efficiency while protecting data stored in the cloud.
The value of our data
Most of us have made large amounts of information available to organizations through shopping online and posting on social media. These activities have created extremely large datasets, known as Big Data, which can be analyzed to reveal human behavior patterns and trends. This valuable information is often sold to other organizations.
"Companies are hungry for more data, to enable them to better understand and profile users," says Lux Anantharaman who heads the Business Analytics Translation center in I2R. "They know the power of Big Data to provide targeted ads, known as personalized marketing, but profiling can also lead to price discrimination called personalized pricing, which most users are not aware of. For example, some airline websites price tickets differently based on the user's device operating systemMac OS users get charged more."
Anantharaman is concerned that most users are not aware of the value of their data, or the fact that when they use 'free' online services they are actually 'paying' for them with their data. Companies then explore the data with analytical computing tools and use the information, along with the latest insights on human behavior from social scientists and economists, to shape the choices offered to their customers.
"The 'big' keep accumulating more and more data about the 'small'," says Anantharaman. "We, the small, are slowly becoming aware of this fact, but generally we feel helpless and resigned about it. Moreover, government regulations haven't kept pace with technology, and often take the side of big organizations, doing a disservice to the users. For example, recent US government measures allow internet service providers to access a user's browsing history without the user's permission."
Anantharaman is adamant that the best way to overcome these difficulties is by educating users and improving government regulation. "This might sound odd from a technology person, but Big Data is not just about technology, it is about how data are used, which is a legal and social issue," he says. "For this reason, our research focuses not just on technological mechanisms, but also explores how regulations and education can help users better understand the power and pitfalls of Big Data privacy."
Quantum complications
While we grapple with data safety in the computing systems that we already use, other scientists are developing technology that could completely transform the field of data security for the devices of tomorrow. In contrast to ordinary computers whose logical 'bits' can only take values of 0 or 1, quantum computers use 'qubits' that can have values of 0, 1 or a combination of both values. This capability opens up an entirely new domain of logic and mathematics, allowing quantum computers to solve complex problems in a fraction of the time it would take a conventional machine. This revolution will arrive with great benefits, but will bring its own problems, as Leonid Krivitsky at the A*STAR Data Storage Institute explains:
"Many cryptography systems rely on hard problems such as prime factorizationthe fact that it is very difficult to figure out the prime factors of a given number. However, theoretical work has shown that the factorization problem could be solved very quickly using a quantum computer. So, once a universal quantum computer is built, it could hack ciphers which were previously thought to be unbreakable."
This might seem alarming, but there is no reason to panic. Functional quantum computers are still a long way off, and to counteract the potential threats, many groups around the world are contributing to the growing field of quantum cryptography, which will redefine our protocols of secure communication. In fact, the new cryptography algorithms made available by quantum computers could provide ultra-high data security long before any risks become a concern.
"I foresee the use of a quantum communication channel as a backup resource for highly sensitive transactions, where security is more important than the transmission speed," says Krivitsky.
For now, though, the challenge is to physically build a stable quantum computer. Krivitsky and co-workers are exploring the possibility of using tiny defects in synthetic diamonds to act as nodes which process and store quantum information.
"We place several diamonds on a single chip and communicate with optical links, similar to those which form the background of the internet," says Krivitsky. "Our innovations will enable transmission of quantum information over long distances and contribute to the development of a worldwide quantum network."
Safeguarding the future
The task of keeping our data secure is clearly a complicated and interdisciplinary challenge. A*STAR researchers are not only developing new technical initiatives, but also working at the forefront of global efforts to raise awareness of data security. By looking for chinks in the armor of global systems like GSM and cloud storage, educating the public about the commercial value of their data, and planning for the future paradigm shift that might be brought about by quantum computers, it is reassuring to know that the brightest minds at A*STAR are focused on keeping our data safe.
Explore further: A user-controlled file security scheme for cloud services
By securing data files with a 'need-to-know' decryption key, researchers at Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) have developed a way to control access to cloud-hosted data in real time, adding ...
While technologies that currently run on classical computers, such as Watson, can help find patterns and insights buried in vast amounts of existing data, quantum computers will deliver solutions to important problems where ...
Cloud storage services, like Dropbox and Gmail, may soon be able to better manage your content, giving you more storage capacity while still being unable to 'read' your data.
IBM announced today it has successfully built and tested its most powerful universal quantum computing processors. The first new prototype processor will be the core for the first IBM Q early-access commercial systems. The ...
We are producing more data than ever before, with more than 2.5 quintillion bytes produced every day, according to computer giant IBM. That's a staggering 2,500,000,000,000 gigabytes of data and it's growing fast.
The encryption codes that safeguard internet data today won't be secure forever.
Nest Labs is adding Google's facial recognition technology to a high-resolution home-security camera, offering a glimpse of a future in which increasingly intelligent, internet-connected computers can see and understand what's ...
A creator of the Android software powering most of the world's smartphones stepped into the competitive hardware market on Tuesday with a new handset called Essential.
Delivering packages with drones can reduce carbon dioxide emissions in certain circumstances as compared to truck deliveries, a new study from University of Washington transportation engineers finds.
A new interactive design tool developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute enables both novices and experts to build customized legged or wheeled robots using 3D-printed components and off-the-shelf actuators.
Apple is reportedly working on a chip called the Apple Neural Engine, which would be dedicated to carrying out artificial intelligence (AI) processing on its mobile devices.
A chess-playing robot stole the show as Asia's largest tech fair kicked off in Taiwan Tuesday with artificial intelligence centre stage.
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Ensuring the security of digital information - Phys.Org
CrowdStrike Extends Falcon Platform with Enhanced Cloud and Data Center Coverage – Business Wire (press release)
IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CrowdStrike Inc., the leader in cloud-delivered endpoint protection, today announced, as part of its Spring release, new features of the CrowdStrike Falcon platform custom-built for cloud providers and modern data centers, providing best-in-class prevention, detection and response for Windows, Linux or macOS servers, powered by artificial intelligence/machine learning.
The servers used in the modern-day data center are faced with commodity, as well as advanced stealthy attacks. CrowdStrike Falcon leverages its industry-leading artificial intelligence/machine learning as well as industry-leading Indicator-of-Attack (IoA) behavioral analysis to bring real-time protection to servers whether on-premise, virtualized or in the cloud. As data center or cloud deployments grow or evolve, with CrowdStrike Falcon, customers are freed from having to add additional management servers or controllers for endpoint protection.
With Falcons lightweight agent, customers can quickly and easily add end-to-end protection with instant zero reboot deployments, no performance impact or signature updates - all of which improve the performance of business-critical servers. CrowdStrike Falcon enables management of all systems, irrespective of their location, from a single console providing a consolidated view into all assets for the enterprise.
CrowdStrike Falcon supports all major platforms including Amazon AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. It also provides protection for guest OS hosted on all popular hypervisors and protects Windows, Linux and macOS guests with a kernel-mode agent. CrowdStrike Falcon allows for complete protection policy control, with full flexibility around policy deployment at the individual server, group or cloud platform/data center levels. Irrespective of how a server is deployed, the security team retains complete visibility and the control required to prevent or contain the attack.
New and Enhanced Capabilities
CrowdStrike Falcon provides features critical to securing data centers, focused on control, visibility and complete protection:
AV-Comparatives has certified CrowdStrike Falcon for anti-malware and exploit protection and noted that Falcon can help organizations efforts with respect to PCI, HIPAA, NIST and FFIEC compliance.
For a while now, within our highly complex environment, managing high-value systems required a choice between maximum protection and maximum performance CrowdStrike has removed that dilemma, said Anton Reynaldo Bonifacio, chief information security officer, Globe Telecom. Adding best-in-class prevention, detection and response without increasing complexity has long been atop every CISOs wish list. CrowdStrike Falcon is lightning fast to deploy and manage, and doesnt slow down a single machine on-premise, in the cloud, or anything in between.
With this Spring release, we continue to advance the Falcon platform to ensure customers can protect all of their systems, whether physical, virtual or cloud-based, with reduced complexity and improved performance, said Dmitri Alperovitch, CrowdStrikes co-founder and chief technology officer. Many legacy AV solutions dont provide sufficient visibility to enable threat hunting and forensic use cases, they poorly protect non-Windows environments, and are cumbersome and sometimes risky to deploy to cloud or hybrid cloud-based data centers. CrowdStrike Falcon addresses all of these pain points and adds scalability, efficacy, and speed.
Recently named a Visionary in the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms, CrowdStrike has set the new standard for endpoint security providing organizations with the only solution that can prevent, detect, respond and hunt for attacks via a single lightweight agent. The platform has achieved impressive success in the market replacing not only legacy AV solutions, but also a variety of next-generation AV point products. CrowdStrike Falcon has been independently tested and proven as an effective AV replacement, including verification from testing with AV-Comparatives and SE Labs.
For additional information about the Spring release, please visit our blog here.
About CrowdStrike
CrowdStrike is the leader in cloud-delivered endpoint protection. The CrowdStrike Falcon platform offers instant visibility and protection across the enterprise and prevents attacks on endpoints on or off the network. CrowdStrike Falcon deploys in minutes to deliver actionable intelligence and real-time protection from Day One. Falcon seamlessly unifies next-generation AV with best-in-class endpoint detection and response, backed by 24/7 managed hunting. Its cloud infrastructure and single-agent architecture take away complexity and add scalability, manageability, and speed. CrowdStrike Falcon protects customers against all cyber attack types, using sophisticated signatureless artificial intelligence/machine learning and Indicator-of-Attack (IOA) based threat prevention to stop known and unknown threats in real time. Powered by the CrowdStrike Threat Graph, Falcon instantly correlates 40 billion security events from across the globe to immediately prevent and detect threats.
There's much more to the story of how Falcon has redefined endpoint protection but there's only one thing to remember about CrowdStrike: We stop breaches.
Learn more: https://www.crowdstrike.com/
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2017 CrowdStrike, Inc. All rights reserved. CrowdStrike, CrowdStrike Falcon, CrowdStrike Threat Graph, CrowdStrike Falcon Prevent, Falcon Prevent, CrowdStrike Falcon Insight, Falcon Insight, CrowdStrike Falcon Discover, Falcon Discover, CrowdStrike Falcon Intelligence, Falcon Intelligence, CrowdStrike Falcon DNS, Falcon DNS, CrowdStrike Falcon OverWatch, and Falcon OverWatch are the trademarks of CrowdStrike, Inc. All other brands, products, or service names are or may be trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.
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Serverless computing: the basics | CSO Online – CSO Online
CSO Online | Serverless computing: the basics | CSO Online CSO Online The latest cloud buzzword sounds like an oxymoron; it's actually a new programming model that abstracts away even more complexity and offers great ... |
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Serverless computing: the basics | CSO Online - CSO Online
SolarWinds Launches SolarWinds Pingdom Server Monitor – 107.180.56.147 (press release) (registration) (blog)
SolarWinds, a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT management software, and the 2016 ASTORS Homeland Security Program Platinum Award Winner for Best Incident & Event Management Solution, has completed the acquisition of Scout Server Monitoring.
The transaction closed Friday, May 5, 2017. As part of the acquisition, Scout Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer Andre Lewis has joined SolarWinds.
With Pingdom Server Monitor, formerly Scout Server Monitoring, SolarWinds enhances its already deep server monitoring capabilities with out-of-the-box simple, yet rich SaaS-based server monitoring developed by DevOps professionals for DevOps professionals.
(Learn how Pingdom makes the Internet faster and more reliable for everyone. Courtesy ofPingdomand YouTube)
In addition to all the great features Scout customers have come to rely on, they will now also benefit from even deeper investment in the product, along with streamlined access to the complete SolarWinds portfolio of SaaS-based tools to better manage, optimize, and troubleshoot the full stack at every layer, from the infrastructure and application layers through the end-user experience.
Were very excited to add Pingdom Server Monitor, formerly Scout Server Monitoring, to our portfolio of products, said Christoph Pfister, executive vice president, products, SolarWinds.
With it, developers and DevOps practitioners have access to an affordable, SaaS-based server monitoring solution. We look forward to investing in it and we welcome Andre Lewis to the SolarWinds team to help in those efforts.
Pingdom Server Monitor joins Pingdom website uptime and performance monitoring products, as well as Librato, Papertrail, and TraceView in the companys SaaS portfolio of products for monitoring cloud-native applications, servers, and other infrastructure to address the complex performance and reliability challenges inherent in todays cloud environments.
The era of cloud and digitalization is driving exponential application growth and increased complexity, Pfister added.
Its clear that cloud-native developers and DevOps teams need faster troubleshooting that enables them to more easily solve problems and improve performance across the full stack, including servers.
The goal of our SaaS portfolio, and the market-leading products within it, is to provide just that, and to do so at an affordable price.
SolarWinds provides powerful and affordable IT management software to customers worldwide, from Fortune 500 enterprises to small businesses, managed service providers (MSPs), government agencies, and educational institutions.
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SolarWinds Launches SolarWinds Pingdom Server Monitor - 107.180.56.147 (press release) (registration) (blog)
University of Michigan Demonstrates Novel Memory Disaggregation Technology – TOP500 News
The lack of memory capacity in traditional computer clusters is a significant limitation to application performance in the datacenter. A new memory disaggregation technology developed at the University of Michigan is designed to help alleviate this critical obstacle.
The problem is common to many datacenter environments, from HPC clusters to cloud server farms. In general, DRAM capacity is often a limiting factor in these scaled-out systems since compute power has leapt ahead of memory advancements. Even in cases where the total amount of memory across the entire system is adequate, local demands may overwhelm (or underwhelm) particular servers.
Researchers at the University of Michigan think they have found an answer, at least for clusters whose networks support Remote Direct Memory Access (RMDA). They claim that the software they have developed, known as Infiniswap, can boost the memory utilization in a cluster by up to 47 percent, which can lead to financial savings of up to 27 percent.
In a nutshell, the software tracks memory utilization across the cluster, and when a server runs out of memory, it borrows memory from other servers with spare capacity. Although remote memory access is going to be slower than accessing local memory, its going to be much faster than swapping the data out to disk, the usual method used to free up extra space.
According to the researchers, the Infiniswap software that does this is itself distributed, so can scale with the size of the cluster. Other than network gear that supports RDMA, Infiniswap isnt dependent on any particular type of hardware and doesnt require modifications to the applications.
The researchers tested Infiniswap on a 32-node cluster with typical workloads that stress the memory subsystem, specifically data-intensive applications that ranged from in-memory databases such as VoltDB and Memcached to popular big data software Apache Spark, PowerGraph and GraphX. They found that the software improved throughput by 4 to 16 times, and tail latency (the speed of the slowest operation) by a factor of 61.
According to project lead Mosharaf Chowdhury, Infiniswap wouldnt be practical without todays faster networks. "Now, we have reached the point where most data centers are deploying low-latency RDMA networks of the type previously only available in supercomputing environments," he explained.
Infiniswap is open source and isavailable in the GitHub repository. A paper providing a detailed description of the software and how it works is available here.
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University of Michigan Demonstrates Novel Memory Disaggregation Technology - TOP500 News
Atlantic.Net Announces Windows Server Container Support in the … – PR Newswire (press release)
Windows Server 2016, the latest Windows Server offering from Microsoft, along with Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2008, are all available on Cloud Servers from Atlantic.Net. The company is one of the first to offer Windows container support, specifically for Docker, a full development platform for creating containerized apps.
"This is a major announcement that will definitely cause a ripple effect across the industry specifically amongst developers. Most developers today move their applications and development environments around tirelessly. They need a cloud that is easy to use, 'on-demand' or self-service (i.e. they can provision the actual servers themselves)," said Marty Puranik, CEO of Atlantic.Net. "Developers can go to a traditional hosting provider, sign a contract and theoretically move the environments between servers they contracted for. Instead, with our offering, developers can now do this without having to sign a contract or talking to anyone. Essentially, we're significantly expediting the process for developers to reap the benefits of containers without any long-term commitment whatsoever."
Erin Chapple, General Manager for Windows Server, Microsoft Corp. said, "Atlantic.Net's support for Windows Server Containers in their cloud platform brings additional choice and options for our joint customers in search of flexible and innovative cloud services."
The Windows Server 2016 is a solid solution for customers needing power and speed to run applications remotely. Atlantic.Net Cloud Server clients can test the new tools offered by the Windows 2016 operating system and pay via a usage model on a per-hour basis, without having to incur additional licensing costs.
Atlantic.Net's Windows Cloud Hosting plans start at only $0.0208 per hour (or $14 per month), with usage calculated on a per hour basis. For a limited time, Atlantic.Net is offering $50 of free credits with promo code 'WinContainer50' for all new clients and 3TBs or more of outbound data transfer is included with every server.
For more information, please visit http://www.atlantic.net.
About Atlantic.NetAtlantic.Net is a global web hosting provider with over 23 years of experience, specializing in Windows, Linux and FreeBSD server hosting. Atlantic.Net provides developer-friendly cloud hosting with a focus on simplifying the experience for users. Additionally, Atlantic.Net offers fully managed environments and security and compliance focused solutions across all its hosting facilities in San Francisco, New York, London, Toronto, Dallas and Orlando. With a range of certifications and an SSAE 16 (SOC 1) TYPE II (Formerly SAS 70) audited data centers that the company owns and operates, the company is also known for its reliability, as dictated by its 100 percent uptime service-level agreement (SLA). For more information, please visit http://www.atlantic.net.
To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/atlanticnet-announces-windows-server-container-support-in-the-cloud-300463805.html
SOURCE Atlantic.Net
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Atlantic.Net Announces Windows Server Container Support in the ... - PR Newswire (press release)
Microsoft cloud servers are taking business across the globe to South Africa – The American Genius
The American Genius | Microsoft cloud servers are taking business across the globe to South Africa The American Genius Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise Division, explained the company recognizes immense opportunity for innovation in Africa, where Microsoft data centers can support many promising entrepreneurs who are hard at ... The great data myth: Is cloud really less secure than on-premise? |
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Microsoft cloud servers are taking business across the globe to South Africa - The American Genius
Foreign firms grapple with China’s ‘punitive’ cybersecurity laws – South China Morning Post
Just days before Chinas new cybersecurity law goes into force, foreign companies are grappling with rules that could tighten what is already one of the worlds most restricted technology regimes.
Recent changes to the language of the law ahead of its June 1 implementation, such as a broader definition of those affected, could drag in a wider array of services and products. While industry groups are lobbying for a delay, the government is moving ahead.
China is bringing in a raft of new measures, giving the government unprecedented access to foreign companies technology, as it bolsters control of the collection and movement of data. Forcing companies to store information within the mainland has already led some to tap cloud computing providers with more local server capacity, a potential boon to homegrown Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings Ltd. at the expense of Amazon.com and Microsoft. Alibaba Group is the owner of the South China Morning Post.
Almost all our companies are making moves to ensure that the majority of the data they collect in China is stored on servers located within China, said Jake Parker, vice-president of the US-China Business Council in Beijing. Its not just the technology companies its financial services, semiconductor manufacturers, every sector of business in China, thats impacted.
China pushes through cybersecurity law despite foreign business fears
One organisation that could feel the pinch of the regulations is GreatFire.org, which monitors blocked websites in China and helps users behind the nations controls. The non-profit group creates copies of banned sites hosted outside the mainland, putting them on Amazon Web Services cloud servers to circumvent government restrictions known as the Great Firewall.
Our strategy would collapse because if foreign businesses host all of their data in China, they would face minimal disruption if the authorities cut off access to the foreign internet, said GreatFire.org founder Charlie Smith.
Alibaba said in a statement it follows all local laws where we conduct our business. Microsoft declined to comment, Tencent could not immediately comment and Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In addition to the restrictions on moving data beyond the mainland, provisions in the law include a more comprehensive security review process for key hardware and software deployed in China and a requirement to assist authorities conducting security investigations.
While individual firms in China rarely speak out publicly against government policy, more than 50 trade associations and chambers of commerce signed a letter in May to the government seeking a delay.
They argued that the law could affect billions of dollars of cross-border trade and lock out foreign cloud operators because of limits on how they operate in the country.
These measures will add costly burdens, restrict competition and may decrease the security of products and jeopardise the privacy of Chinese citizens, according to the letter from bodies representing businesses based in the US, Europe, Japan, Korea, Australia and elsewhere.
Foreign firms are pushing for change, but the law has support from some domestic experts, such as Li Yuxiao, a professor who studies internet regulation at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. He sees secure information systems as integral to protecting the economy while also placing value on domestic operating systems over foreign products.
Cybersecurity is crucial to national security, he said.
Is China making life difficult for foreign companies?
Gabriela Kennedy, a Hong Kong-based partner at the law firm Mayer Brown JSM, said the National Peoples Congresss Standing Committee passed the law in 2016 ahead of its implementation, giving companies and others time to adjust. Subsequent language published by the government expanded the scope of a law that was considered quite onerous to begin with, she added.
For example, rules limiting the transfer of data outside Chinas borders originally applied only to critical information infrastructure operators. But that was changed mid-April to network operators, which could mean just about any business.
Even a small e-business or email system could be considered a network, said Richard Zhang, director of KPMG Advisory in Shanghai.
Another provision requires IThardware and services to undergo inspection and verification as secure and controllable before companies can deploy them in China. That appears to be already tilting purchasing decisions at state-owned enterprises.
Weve heard from our members that domestic banks and SOEs are being much more thoughtful about purchasing domestic technology and shifting away from foreign products, despite the fact that theres no specific requirement for them to do so, said Parker.
While the laws affect all companies in China, its expected to hit the foreign firms the hardest. That is because they typically have more businesses, headquarters and data processing centres overseas with a greater need to move information outside the mainland, according to Scott Thiel, a Hong Kong-based partner at the law firm DLA Piper.
Why foreign companies are shutting shop in China
Sophisticated or widespread cyberattacks, such as the recent WannaCry ransomware attack that exploited versions of Microsoft Windows, may bolster the governments resolve.
Adam Segal, director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Programme at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said: We can assume that Chinese leadership will use it as an example of why China needs its own technology and cannot continue to rely on foreign suppliers.
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Foreign firms grapple with China's 'punitive' cybersecurity laws - South China Morning Post