Tech Update SummaryAugust 2015

Blue Mountain Data Systems

For CTOs, CIOs & CISOs

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For CTOs, CIOs & CISOs

Every business day, we publish a Daily Tech Update for Federal & State CTOs ,CIOs & CISOs on the

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Here’s the summary of the Daily Tech Updates for August 2015. Hope the information and ideas prove

useful.

Best,Paul VeselyPresident and Principal ArchitectBlue Mountain Data Systems Inc.

Application Development

APP DEVELOPMENT: Did You Know About the Node.js Tools for Visual Studio? Node.js Tools for Visual Studio, or just NTVS, was launched in March 2014 with an initial Alpha version, being greeted at the time of its launch with high praises from both the Microsoft and Node.js communities. Read more[SOFTPEDIA.COM]

PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATIONS: Edge Performs Better than Chrome and Firefox. As detailed in A Developer’s View on Microsoft Edge, the Redmond browser maker has changed their attitude towards web technologies, web standards and compliance with other browsers. Not only they discarded some old IE components and decided to implement HTML, JavaScript and CSS standards to the letter with the new rendering engine, but they started to address an issue that was long due: performance. Read more[INFOQ.COM]

Application DevelopmentSECTION 508: Making Online and e-Learning Accessible to All. American teens spend an average of seven hours a day connected to their electronic devices (computers, phones, etc.). So it you want to get into the hearts and minds of young people today, you have to where they are: online. That’s why websites, emails and e-learning tools need to be accessible to all, including people with hearing and vision impairments who use screen readers or who need captions on videos or other assistive technologies. Read more[HUFFINGTONPOST.COM]

LOSING STEAM: Don’t Drop Everything To Learn Ruby On Rails. Using U.S. job listing data collected by Burning Glass and the Brookings Institution, Quartz found that the most valuable programming skill to have today is Ruby on Rails (AKA Rails or RoR) experience, with an average salary of $109,460. However, before you run out and buy Ruby on Rails for Dummies, you might want to consider some other data which indicate that Rails (and Ruby) usage is not trending upwards. Read more [ITWORLD.COM]

Application DevelopmentAPPLE NEWS: What Open-Sourcing Swift 2 Means For App Makers. Apple dropped a bomb at the recent Worldwide Developers Conference—and it’s a doozy. Among other things, the company is open-sourcing the second version of its programming language. In other words, the company will make Swift’s source code freely available, which means others may be able to redistribute it and even modify it. Read more[READWRITE.COM]

OPEN SOURCE: Docker Certification Program Eyes Long-Term Partnerships. ETP status is being granted to companies that have worked with Docker to demonstrate integration with Docker containers. The first group of businesses to achieve ETP status are companies that have integrated their monitoring tools with the Docker Platform via its application programming interfaces (APIs). Read more[ZDNET.COM]

Application DevelopmentMOBILE APP LANDSCAPE 2015: Who Will Be The Winners? As we watch the enterprise mobile app landscape develop, we have begun to formulate a thesis on the evolving ecosystem of SDKs (software development kits), APIs and development platforms that mobile entrepreneurs are utilizing to accelerate the development, marketing and monetization of their mobile apps. Collectively, we are referring to these companies as the mobile app enablers, and we are starting to see some early trends. Read more[TECHCRUNCH.COM]

CALLING IT QUITS: Uh-Oh! Facebook, Inc. Just “Unfriended” Microsoft, Inc. It was the end of 2013 when Microsoft announced the good news: In cooperation with Facebook, its Windows applications and Windows Phone OS officially supported the wildly popular social media king. As the partnership matured, Microsoft expanded its integration and began referring to it as “Facebook Connect.”

Read more[FOOL.COM]

Application DevelopmentINFORMATION SHARING: NASA Launches API Portal To Explore Vast Amounts Of Agency Data. NASA launched a vehicle of a different kind recently — one that encourages developers to explore the space agency’s database and begin using or contributing application programming interfaces. Read more[FIERCEGOVERNMENTIT.COM]

STRATEGY: No Mobile App Developers? Turn To Low-Code Tools. With so many enterprises looking to adopt mobile apps, it’s getting harder to find qualified developers, but the vendor market is adjusting to provide IT with tools to simplify mobile app dev. Read more[TECHTARGET.COM]

Application DevelopmentPROS AND CONS: 5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Build A Custom App. People have become accustomed to having everything they need immediately at their fingertips. This may seem unreasonable, but today if you cannot give your clients instant gratification it reflects poorly on your business and competency. As a result, many operations are turning to software applications to keep up. Read more[BUSINESS2COMMUNITY.COM]

NEW DEV TOOLS: How Containers Change Everything. Modern application development owes much to the growth of the devops movement and the automation tools it has delivered. Instead of just writing code, developers now need to think in terms the tools they’re using — and how they fit together in a flow from initial idea to a live application. Read more[INFOWORLD.COM]

Application DevelopmentTHINK MOBILE: Users Won’t Tolerate Sub-Quality Enterprise Apps. There is certainly no shortage of enterprise software, but there is a shortage of enterprise software that is actually used by employees. Why? Read more[DEVELOPER-TECH.COM]

MicrosoftWINDOWS 10 REALITY CHECK: Separating Fact From Fiction. It’s time to clear up common misconceptions about Microsoft’s latest, evolving version of its flagship OS. Perhaps not surprising, there’s quite a bit of misinformation floating around, some of it harmless, but some of it potentially damaging to any decisions you make about Windows 10. Read more[INFOWORLD.COM]

VIRTUAL REALITY: Microsoft’s Oculus Partnership Is A Very Clever Move. Oculus revealed the final version of its Rift virtual reality headset recently, but Microsoft managed to steal the show. The company surprised the world by announcing a partnership with Oculus to bundle an Xbox One controller with every Oculus Rift and the ability to stream Xbox One games to the VR headset. Read more[THEVERGE.COM]

MicrosoftWINDOWS 10 REALITY CHECK: Separating Fact From Fiction. It’s time to clear up common misconceptions about Microsoft’s latest, evolving version of its flagship OS. Perhaps not surprising, there’s quite a bit of misinformation floating around, some of it harmless, but some of it potentially damaging to any decisions you make about Windows 10. Read more[INFOWORLD.COM]

VIRTUAL REALITY: Microsoft’s Oculus Partnership Is A Very Clever Move. Oculus revealed the final version of its Rift virtual reality headset recently, but Microsoft managed to steal the show. The company surprised the world by announcing a partnership with Oculus to bundle an Xbox One controller with every Oculus Rift and the ability to stream Xbox One games to the VR headset. Read more[THEVERGE.COM]

MicrosoftWEB BROWSERS: Microsoft Deletes Older Ask.Com Browser Toolbars, But Ignores Oracle’s New Crapware. Microsoft took what appeared to be a shot at Oracle’s wallet when it switched on search-and-destroy in its security software for older versions of the Ask browser toolbar, which has long been bundled with Java even in the face of users’ complaints. Read more[COMPUTERWORLD.COM]

TOUCHSCREEN TECH: This Is Microsoft’s Giant, $20,000 Tablet. The Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30) Surface Hub is a cross between a super-sized tablet and a whiteboard. The expansive 84-inch Hub has a “4K” ultra high-definition display and will cost $20,000. The smaller 55-inch version has a 1080p display and will start at $7,000. Read more[MONEYCNN.COM]

Document Conversion & CMSHOW TO: Convert Scanned Images Into Editable Word Files. Many times we are required to scan a document (an image file, basically) and edit it. This could be relatively easy if it were a small document or it could be tedious and time consuming if the document were long. Therefore, we need a software of some kind that can convert images into editable text files. Read more[BETANEWS.COM]

DROWNING IN PAPER: Solving The Search Problem For Large-Scale Repositories. With agencies receiving hundreds of thousands of new documents each year — which can sometimes range to thousands of pages — the content easily gets lost in unsearchable repositories, and staffers struggle to find the right document in a massive document databases. Read more[GCN.COM]

Document Conversion & CMSDOCUMENT MANAGEMENT: Tips For Records Managers Stuck In A Corner. Information governance consultant Steve Weissman has a message for records managers everywhere: “No one puts baby in the corner.” The missive is a delightful riff on the movie classic Dirty Dancing, but the point is the same. Organizations can only dismiss records management professionals as “glorified librarians” if the RM pro lets them. Read more[FIERCECONTENTMANAGEMENT.COM]

CMS NEWS: Today’s Top 3 Content Management Systems Are Based On PHP. PHP has been one of the most powerful server-side scripting level languages so far. W3techs.com, which is engaged in web technology survey, says PHP is powering 82% of all the websites whose server-side programming language is known. Read more[WHATECH.COM]

For the CTO, CIO & CISO

ONGOING DEBATE: Breaking Down The CISO Reporting Structure. The CISO reporting structure has come under fire after a long line of high-profile data breaches, so who should CISOs report to? A recurring debate for several years, it has elevated even more so in light of recent highly publicized breaches, such as Target, Home Depot and Anthem. Read more[SEARCHSECURITY.TECHTARGET.COM]

CYBERSECURITY AND THE CIO: Changing The Conversation. Who in the enterprise should take the lead on cyber-security issues? And what role should the CIO play? These were the two main questions with which speakers wrestled during the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium, held in May on the school’s campus in Cambridge, Mass. Read more[INFORMATIONWEEK.COM]

For the CTO, CIO & CISOC-SUITE: Your Corporation Is Killing Innovation Without Knowing It. In the post-recession economy, markets are changing faster than the mighty corporations of old can keep up with. To combat the epidemic of nimble startups, corporations are advocating fresh thinking such as prototyping, failing fast and quick iterations based on customer feedback. But few, if any, corporations have been able to point to any concrete successes, no matter the size. Why is that? Read more[HUFFINGTONPOST.COM]

FIVE MINUTE CIO: Gareth Rogan, Lifes2good. Recently awarded Best Managed Company at the 2015 Deloitte Best Managed Companies Awards, Lifes2good is a rapidly expanding global health and beauty business that markets and distributes a portfolio of category-leading health and beauty brands. In the past three years, the company has seen nearly 100pc compounded sales growth thanks to accelerating sales of core products, new product launches and expanding distribution. Read more[SILICONREPUBLIC.COM]

For the CTO, CIO & CISOIT STRATEGY: How Twitter Can Help You Recruit Tech Talent. Twitter conjures up images of funny celebrity tweets and corporate PR gaffes rather than job searching and recruiting. However, there is an emerging pool of job candidates on Twitter. In fact, 45 percent of job seekers report that they use Twitter… Read more[CIO.COM]

GOOGLE NEWS: Will Its Artificial Intelligence Run An IT Help Desk? A robot could answer your next call to tech support, thanks to new artificial intelligence research at Google. The company taught computers how to have context-sensitive discussions with people about issues ranging from philosophy to humdrum IT help-desk tasks. Read more[INFORMATION-MANAGEMENT.COM]

For the CTO, CIO & CISOINFOGRAPHIC: The Evolution of Provisioning. Traditional provisioning has failed to deliver on its promised benefits. Over the years, organizations have struggled to keep up with increasing demands around cloud, mobile, and compliance. Read this infographic to learn why a new approach to provisioning is needed. Read more[IDGENTERPRISE.COM]

NETWORK MODERNIZATION: Big Change, But One Step At A Time. Federal CIOs frequently acknowledge that their networks might not be up to snuff. Budget constraints and limited resources are cited as top challenges for maintaining networks, and barely one in 10 believes the agency’s network infrastructure can support modern solutions to move and manage data, according to Brocade’s latest survey of 200 participants at 65 federal agencies. Read more[GCN.COM]

For the CTO, CIO & CISODATA PROTECTION: Software Developers Are Failing To Implement Crypto Correctly, Data Reveals. Despite a big push over the past few years to use encryption to combat security breaches, lack of expertise among developers and overly complex libraries have led to widespread implementation failures in business applications. The scale of the problem is significant. Read more[CSOONLINE.COM]

STUDY RESULTS: Executives Expect Digital Disruption to Displace 4 in 10 Incumbents by Industry Within Next Five Years. he effect of digital disruption on business has the potential to overturn incumbents and reshape markets faster than perhaps any force in history, according to a new report released today by the Global Center for Digital Business Transformation (DBT Center). Read more[MARKETWATCH.COM]

For the CTO, CIO & CISOFOOD FOR THOUGHT: Buy Time, Meet Urgent Security Needs With Temporary CISO. At a time when cybersecurity threats continue to increase in sophistication and prevalence, there’s a real shortage of experienced, skilled security leaders. What’s a company to do? One thing to consider is “renting” a chief information security officer (CISO) or other senior security executive. Read more[DELL.COM]

BYOD: CISOs Go From ‘No’ to ‘Know’. This year’s Eskenzi PR annual CISO forum attracted the security leaders of some of the largest UK organizations. Household names from insurance, banking, accounting, pharmaceuticals and media were all represented, as well as a large service provider and one true 21st century, born-in-the-cloud business. Read more[INFOSECURITY-MAGAZINE.COM]

For the CTO, CIO & CISOCORPORATE SECURITY: Why Most Cybersecurity Activity Happens Outside the CISO’s Office. Most corporate cybersecurity efforts happen outside the official security department, says James Kaplan, a partner at McKinsey & Co. and co-author of “Beyond Cybersecurity: Protecting Your Digital Business.” Critical cybersecurity work touches all areas of a company, including risk management and application development, Mr. Kaplan said. Read more[WSJ.COM]

BEST PRACTICES: CIO And CISO Summit Offers Hard Dose Of Transformation Reality. Information technology and IT security leaders are desperate for advice, funding and resources to help them in the battle for security supremacy. It was that mission that just brought dozens of CIOs and CIOs to Boston for the CIO/CISO Summit. Read more[FIERCECIO.COM]

For the CTO, CIO & CISOTHE CIA PRINCIPLE: What Hedge Fund CISOs Need To Consider When Appointing A SaaS Provider. One of the problems that hedge fund CISOs face today is making sure that the level of certification they put in place to protect their network is commensurate with the size of the firm, and, importantly, the perceived level of threat to a fund’s assets. Read more[HEDGEWEEK.COM]

DATA PROTECTION: Government Ranks Last In Fixing Software Security Holes. Three-quarters of all government Web and mobile applications fail their initial security reviews, making it the worst-performing vertical — and government agencies are also the slowest at fixing vulnerabilities, according to a new report released by Veracode. Read more[CSOONLINE.COM]

For the CTO, CIO & CISOOPINION: Lead, Follow, Or Get Out Of The Way Of Cloud. Taxes and death may be the two certainties in life but for IT the certainty today is cloud. Whether it’s a primarily a line of business decision or an established corporate strategy cloud is, in fact, an inevitability. But what, exactly, does that mean? Is SaaS inevitable? Or IaaS? Or PaaS? Private? Public? All of the above? Read more[CSOONLINE.COM]

LEADERSHIP ROLES: How CIOs Can Create The Voice Of IT. Even the most business astute CIO could use a little help on the communications front. That’s why more CIOs are hiring dedicated IT communications specialists to help build and nurture the IT brand. Read more[CIO.COM]

For the CTO, CIO & CISOLOOKING AHEAD: CISO Strategies For 2020. Chief information security officers (CISOs) have plenty to keep them awake at night. Security threats have more or less doubled in just the last year. Attacks are ongoing and constant — the state government of Michigan alone records a staggering 730,000 attempted attacks each day. Read more[SECURITYINTELLIGENCE.COM]

CHANGE IN C-SUITE: Why the Boss Is Younger Than You Are. As older baby boomers retire, more companies are turning to members of Gen X, those born between about 1965 and 1980, and younger boomers, now in their mid-50s. Read more[NASDAQ.COM]

Data Encryption & VPNSECURITY: How, Why And Whether To Enter The New VPN War Zone. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is not an easy concept to understand or, once understood, to explain. The name is far from self-explanatory, and renaming it to something more approximate to what it is most popularly used for these days — such as ‘Online Country Changer’ — does not respect, for instance, the legitimate ways that businesses use VPNs – often to connect to locations only ten feet away.Read more[THESTACK.COM]

THE V.P.N.: Treading Carefully in the 21st Century. The World Wide Web becoming the 21st century version of Central Park after midnight, increased security protocols have been invented and initiated. One of the most reliable and frequently used is the Virtual Private Network. Read more[HUFFINGTONPOST.COM]

Data Encryption & VPNPEW STUDY: Ten Low-Tech Ways To Protect Your Privacy Online. Despite the seemingly endless hack attacks, and a recent Pew study showing that Americans feel powerless to protect themselves against intrusions on their online privacy, few Americans do much in the way of adopting privacy enhancing measures. Read more[CNBC.COM]

HACKTIVISM: Even With A VPN, Open Wi-Fi Exposes Users. By now, any sentient IT person knows the perils of open Wi-Fi. Those free connections in cafes and hotels don’t encrypt network traffic, so others on the network can read your traffic and possibly hijack your sessions. But one of the main solutions to this problem has a hole in it that isn’t widely appreciated. Read more[ARSTECHNICA.COM]

Document Management SystemsSERIES F INVESTMENTS: Document Management Company DocuSign Raises $233M. Document management company DocuSign has just raised a massive amount of funding, more than doubling its venture capital in one swoop. The company revealed a new $233 million Series F round of funding on Monday, which was led by Brookside Capital and Bain Capital Ventures. Read more[VATOR.TV]

UK IT NEWS: Use Of Cloud-Based Print And Document Management Soars. United Kingdom businesses are starting to use more cloud services for their print and file management, so says the Cloud Industry Forum. According to research carried out by the cloud accreditation company, this usage has increased by almost half since 2014. Read more[PCR-ONLINE.BIZ]

Document Management SystemsORGANIZING CONTENT: Taming SharePoint Document Management. One of the hardest things to do is to get people to put things in the right places. Even when you had “sub-sub-sub-sub” folders on your network drive, people still put things in the wrong spots. With the Content Organizer feature activated in your Document Center site, all they will ever have to do is upload their documents into a Drop-off library. Read more[BUSINESSMANAGEMENTDAILY.COM]

ADVICE: You Can’t Afford to Ignore Content Management. Organizations are facing massive problems with content overload, especially from data generated by the Internet of Things (IoT), according to a recently published market intelligence report from AIIM, the Association for Information and Image Management. Read more[CMSWIRE.COM]

Application Development

BIG DATA TOOLS: Oracle Tackles Spatial and Graph Big Data Analytics. With nearly 20 years of experience working with spatial and graph data in its flagship relational database, Oracle Corp. is taking that expertise and putting it into a new Big Data tool. Read more[ADTMAG.COM]

DISCOVER OPEN SOURCE: It Has To Be More Than Linux. While the notion of free software has lasted since the days Richard Stallman was sleeping under his desk at MIT, the full thrust of collaboratively and openly licensed software really took off with the advent of Linux. Read more[OPENSOURCE.COM]

Application DevelopmentGARTNER FINDINGS: Hadoop Adoption Remains Steady, But Slow. Is your company planning to invest in Hadoop in the next two years? Well, 54% of Gartner Research Circle members said no. That also means 46% said yes, but that little inversion is turning into a terabyte of commentary, full of sound and fury, signifying business as usual. Read more[INFORMATIONWEEK.COM]

AGILE DEVELOPMENT: Reversibility, Communication and Collaboration. At the inaugural O’Reilly Software Architecture conference, Molly Dishman and Martin Fowler discussed the role of architecture within agile software development. Key takeaways included; architects must remain ‘hands on’; architecture should focus on reducing irreversibility; adaptable documentation is essential in order to ensure clear communication of the architecture… Read more[INFOQ.COM]

Programming & Scripting Development Client & Server-Side

TOP 12: Computer Programming Languages That Are In Demand Now And Pay The Highest Salary. Technology keeps changing and the Computer language which was once in demand might suddenly disappear with the advent of a new language and programs. Hence if anyone aspires to become a computer programmer or coder or software engineer it is always advisable that the programmer should learn to build a software by mastering the algorithms, designing principles and technologies at all levels of the stack. Read more[TECHWORM.COM]

MAKING HEADWAY: Apple’s Swift Creeps Up Dev Language Survey — But It’s Bad News For VB. A new programming language survey shows Apple’s Swift breaking into the top 20 for the first time, while the future of Microsoft’s Visual Basic (VB) in the top rankings is now “unclear”. JavaScript is top by a narrow margin, followed by Java, PHP, Python, C#, C++ and Ruby (the last three are ranked fifth). Read more[THEREGISTER.COM]

Programming & Scripting Development Client & Server-Side

NEW INITIATIVE: Consortium Makes Business Case For R Language. As more data scientists and researchers embrace the R programming language and statistical computing environment, the Linux Foundation has moved to strengthen the user community and, with it, the development of more business applications through a collaborative development initiative called the R Consortium. Read more[DATANAMI.COM]

JAVA TURNS 20: So What Else is New? Oracle’s Java turns 20 this year. C++ hit the big 3-5 last year, while C is over 40. Microsoft’s C#, the baby of the group, is 15 years old. All of these continue to command a significant following even in the embedded space. All have significant corporate support that helps with their staying power and they have been continually updated with new features. Read more[ELECTRONICDESIGN.COM]

Programming & Scripting Development Client & Server-Side

PROGRAMMING TIPS: 6 Time-Consuming Tasks You Can Automate With Code. Not everyone needs to become a software engineer, but almost every office worker uses a laptop as a daily tool. Computers are such a huge productivity booster because they support a large market of programs and apps designed for these workers. But commercial and open source software have a “last mile” problem: that they don’t automate every conceivable task. Read more[OPENSOURCE.COM]

MICROSOFT: Its Worldwide Telescope Astronomy Software Is Now An Open-Source Project. Microsoft has boosted its open-source credentials by making the code for its Worldwide Telescope (WWT) software available on GitHub for anyone to use. Microsoft first revealed plans to make WWT freely available under the MIT license back in January, and six months on it is now officially an independent project, as part of the .NET Foundation, a forum established on the back of Microsoft’s software framework that went open source last year. Read more[VENTUREPRO.COM]

Programming & Scripting Development Client & Server-Side

SERVER-SIDE: There’s a Way for Search Engines to Crawl JavaScript Websites and Applications. In the last decade, no other programming language has risen from the depths of the Web development world to the heights and success that JavaScript has. From a quirky scripting language that was generally used to animate menu options in the user’s browser, JavaScript is now a server-side interpreted language with servers and powerful middleware that can outperform even some classic LAMP stack setups. Read more[NEWS.SOFTPEDIA.COM]

BOOK REVIEW: Speaking JavaScript. If you need a “big book of everything JavaScript” this might be the one you are looking for. Read more[I-PROGRAMMER.INFO]

Cloud Computing

DEVELOPERS’ NEW ROLE: Hold The Enterprise’s Hand With Cloud Computing. Ultimately, decisions around cloud application or platform development and adoption are driven by the business. But the people bringing cloud in and enlightening their enterprises are the “developer visionaries” who understand the implications it brings to businesses, as well as keeping the whole thing from becoming a tangled, hairy and expensive mess. Read more[ZDNET.COM]

CLOUD WORLD FORUM: Five Ways To Make Cloud Success A Reality For Your Business. Everyone is looking for that silver bullet which makes their cloud implementations a success. It’s little wonder that events such as Cloud World Forum and Cloud Expo are at the forefront of executives’ minds. Read more[CLOUDCOMPUTING-NEWS.NET]

Cloud Computing

WHITEPAPER: Buyer’s Guide – Enterprise Platform as a Service (PaaS). With an array of options from public IaaS to private PaaS, organizations often find it difficult to discern where different cloud technologies fit. This document provides guidance on using private PaaS in an enterprise and will introduce key concepts, business values, and preparations necessary for acquiring and implementing an enterprise Platform as a Service tier. Read more[CIO.COM]

ENTERPRISE MANAGERS: Oracle Offers Software To Ease Hybrid Cloud Management. Oracle wants to make it easy for its enterprise customers to move some of their software-based workloads from the vendor to the cloud. To the Oracle Cloud, that is. Read more[COMPUTERWORLD.COM]

Mobile Technology

NEW RESEARCH: Mobile Technology To Blame For Workplace Stress. Interim management provider Russam GMS surveyed the attitudes of senior executives towards fitness, health and leadership, with three quarters blaming mobile technology for creating a more stressful environment. Russam questioned its database of senior executives and 60 per cent of respondents said their employers expect them to answer emails outside of work hours, while a fifth of respondents said that “switching off from work at home” is their biggest challenge in terms of looking after their health. Read more[TRAININGJOURNAL.COM]

GOOGLE RESEARCH: Computer Vision And Mobile Technology Could Help Blind People ‘See’. Funded by a Google Faculty Research Award, specialists in computer vision and machine learning based at the University of Lincoln, UK, are aiming to embed a smart vision system in mobile devices to help people with sight problems navigate unfamiliar indoor environments. Read more [PHYS.ORG]

Mobile Technology

JAVA TESTING FRAMEWORKS: Six Steps to Accelerating Mobile App Testing. In the mobile enterprise, if you’re not testing and releasing apps faster than your competitors, you’re falling behind. Even the stuffiest insurance company knows by now that speed kills in mobile. But while developer and QA teams are doing their best to fast-track their apps, a recent survey by the Perfecto Mobile research team showed that organizations still struggle with what we like to call velocity blockers, which are testing practices that get in the way of quick, iterative releases. Read more[THESERVERSIDE.COM]

RETRO READING LIST: Back To The Future Of Mobile Computing. I’m sure you have heard by now that mobile computing is not new. For a quick trip down (fairly recent) memory lane Adam Sivell thought it would be fun to look at some 1990s mobility articles and quotes. Read more[APPSTECHNEWS.COM]

Cloud

PREDICTION: 55% of Enterprises Say Cloud Computing Will Enable New Business Models In Three Years. In late 2014, Oxford Economics and SAP collaborated on a survey of 200 senior business and IT executives globally regarding the adoption and use of cloud technology. Oxford Economics’ analysts compared the latest survey with one completed in 2012 looking for leading indicators of cloud adoption in enterprises. Read more[FORBES.COM]

Government SecurityOPM BREACH: Hackers who raided the U.S. government’s personnel office gained access to secret background investigations conducted on current and former employees, senior administration officials said Friday—an ominous development in the recent theft of federal data, one of the largest in history. Read more[WSJ.COM]

ENCRYPTION: US Government Wants A Single Website Security Standard. Uncle Sam is implementing changes across the board to make HTTPS a standard for federal websites. It’s a a “new, strong baseline of user privacy and security” according to a post by 18F, one of the government’s internal data agencies. Once in place, this would effectively bring all federal websites up to the security standards many private sector outfits already employ. Read more[ENGADGET.COM]

Endpoint AuthenticationDEVICE SECURITY: Apple Adds 6-Digit Passcodes And A Splash Of 2FA To iOS9. Apple has announced it will strengthen device security with iOS9 by moving from 4-digit passcodes to 6-digit passcodes. This will make brute-force attacks more difficult, increasing the number of possible codes from about 10,000 to about 1 million. Read more[DARKREADING.COM]

SECURITY STOCK NEWS: Company Shares of Symantec Corporation Drops By -2.54%. Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ:SYMC) lost 5.99% in a four-week period in May/June. As a result, Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ:SYMC) has underperformed in that period of time. Investors should watch out for further signals and trade with caution. Read more[NEWSWATCHINTERNATIONAL.COM]

Endpoint AuthenticationFOOD FOR THOUGHT: QUESTION: Will Billions of IoT Devices Become Billions of Security Vulnerabilities? Conventional approaches to IT security will leave the Internet of Things (IoT) vulnerable to devastating attacks, according to Alan Grau, president of Icon Labs. The firm produces security products and an accompanying framework for manufacturers of embedded and IoT devices. Read more[DESIGNNEWS.COM]

OAUTH CAPABILITY: Office 365 Gets E-Mail Client Authentication Improvements. In June, Microsoft added Android and iOS Outlook client authentication improvements for its Office 365 Exchange Online subscribers. Specifically, Microsoft’s June Office 365 update turned on the use of the OAuth delegation protocol for use by those Outlook clients. Read more[REDMONDMAG.COM]

SharepointNEXT GENERATION: SharePoint 2016 Built On Cloud Foundation. When SharePoint Server 2016 is released next year, Microsoft’s cloud services will be deeply ingrained, creating a more unified end user experience across components. “Everything we’re doing in Office 365 inspires the [SharePoint Server] product going forward, and you’ll see this cadence continuing,” said Mark Kashman, a senior product manager at Microsoft on the SharePoint team. Read more[GCN.COM]

HYBRID PLATFORMS: 5 Tips For Boosting SharePoint Hybrid Adoption With Analytics. Your organization has implemented SharePoint, or perhaps a hybrid version including deployments across various environments. But, are you well equipped to thoroughly monitor your adoption rates, to see whether your users are benefitting from the portal? Recently, there has been a significant shift from On-Premises deployments of SharePoint to SharePoint on the cloud, resulting in multiple deployments that can be challenging to consistently track and monitor. Read more [MEMEBURN.COM]

SharepointVIDEO SERIES: Data Loss Prevention In SharePoint – Plus New Mobile Encryption Viewers. This Microsoft video introduces the information protection updates coming to Office 365 and demonstrate the upcoming Data Loss Prevention (DLP) capabilities in SharePoint and OneDrive for Business, the upcoming Office 365 compliance center, one-time passcodes for viewing encrypted email and the just-released Office 365 Message Encryption viewers for iOS and Android. Read more[MSDN.COM]

AMAZON EC2: SAP And SharePoint Deployments Targeted In Next Generation Upgrade. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has upgraded its EC2 elastic computing instances, offering up the M4 in five different sizes to support a wide range of workloads. The next-generation range instances are available in five different instance sizes to support different workloads.Read more[CLOUDPRO.CO.UK]

Federal AgenciesLEGISLATION Cybersecurity Measure Blocked In U.S. Senate. The U.S. Senate recently failed to advance legislation to strengthen protections against cyber attacks, as Democrats banded together to oppose the measure’s inclusion in a defense policy bill President Barack Obama has threatened to veto. Read more[BUSINESSINSURANCE.COM]

GOVERNMENT TRANSITION: Innovation Will Push IPv6 into the Home Stretch. With the pool of IP version 4 (IPv4) addresses about to run out, the federal government expected its agencies to be much further along in their deployment of IPv6 infrastructure. After all, most new Internet users access government resources via IPv6. However, many agencies, flush with IPv4 addresses but tight on staffing and budget, still don’t feel the urgency. Read more[FEDTECHMAGAZINE.COM]

Federal AgenciesWHITEPAPER: Transforming The Citizen Experience. Smart, Internet-enabled service delivery from companies such as Amazon and Netflix have changed the way citizens expect to interact with the government. The White House has asked federal managers to learn from the private sector and deliver world-class customer service to citizens. Read more[FEDERALTIMES.COM]

FAA NEWS: Amazon Insists Federal Rules Apply To U.S. Deliveries By Drone. Amazon.com, seeking to bolster its efforts to deliver products via drone, said recently that states and local communities should not be allowed to regulate unmanned aerial systems (UAS) authorized by federal aviation regulators. Read more[WHTC.COM]

Federal AgenciesEMM SOLUTIONS: Governments Embrace Enterprise Mobility Management. Workplaces demand mobility, and that’s particularly true of state police, environmental inspectors and budget analysts who all need access to smartphones and tablets to work more effectively. Read more[STATETECHMAGAZINE.COM]

COMMENTARY: Federal Shared Services — Why Legislation Is Necessary. Why is legislation necessary to advance shared services? Doesn’t the executive branch have all the authority it needs? Read more[FCW.COM]

Federal AgenciesGAO AUDIT: CDM, NIST Framework Help Remedy Federal Cybersecurity Challenges Identified. A recent GAO audit report states that, “federal and contractor systems face an evolving array of cyber-based threats” which “can be unintentional–for example, from equipment failure, careless or poorly trained employees; or intentional-targeted or untargeted attacks from criminals, hackers adversarial nations or terrorists, among others.” Read more[HSTODAY.COM]

A CASE FOR PIV: U.S. Government Emails, Passwords Found On Web. Almost everybody reuses passwords. With so many accounts to keep track of the password might have slight variations — 06 instead of 05 or @ instead of a — but a 2014 study stated that 63% of U.S. business owners reuse the same passwords to log in to different systems. Some 73% of full-time workers also admit to reusing the same batch of passwords online. Read more[SECUREIDNEWS.COM]

Federal Agencies

CLOUD SURVEY: DOD Wants to Build in the Cloud. Going forward, technology professionals inside the Department of Defense would rather build new applications in the cloud than migrate existing applications, according to a new report from MeriTalk, underwritten by General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT). Read more[FEDTECHMAGAZINE.COM]

RADIO NEWS PROGRAM: Ron Ross – New Guidance From NIST. The National Institute of Standards and Technology finalized its guidance for contractors, research centers and other organizations that handle sensitive federal information. Ron Ross is a fellow at NIST. He reviewed the guidelines for the information called “controlled unclassified information” on In Depth with Francis Rose. Read more[FEDERALNEWSRADIO.COM]

Federal AgenciesFBI ALERT: $18 Million in Ransomware Losses. In the past year, U.S. businesses and consumers have experienced more than $18 million in losses stemming from a single strain of ransomware called CryptoWall, according to the Internet Crime Complaint Center. Read more[GOVINFOSECURITY.COM]

CRYPTOGRAPHY: NIST Provides Government with New Standards for PIV Cards. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) updated the technical specifications for the security cards federal employees and contractors use to access computers and facilities. The updates to the government’s Personal Identification Verification (PIV) Cards focus on credentials and technical cryptographic details. Read more[FEDTECHMAGAZINE.COM]

Federal AgenciesPROJECT MANAGEMENT: Accelerating Your DevOps Journey In The Public Sector. In the public sector, programs can run slowly and inefficiently. The government’s information technology systems are growing more outmoded while the public’s expectations about technology, speed and delivery are rising. As the private sector pushes IT boundaries and experiments with improved services… Read more[GOVLOOP.COM]

VETERANS AFFAIRS: VA Gets Serious About PIV, Two-Factor Authentication During Cybersecurity Sprint. The Veterans Affairs Department is using the recent information system breaches at the Office of Personnel Management as an opportunity to review current security practices and push existing protocols that may not have been fully implemented. It’s all part of the work being done at VA as part of a post-OPM breach “30-day cybersecurity sprint” orchestrated by the Office of Management and Budget. Read more [FIERCEGOVERNMENTIT.COM]

Federal AgenciesIMPENDING COLLABORATION: FCC Poised To Approve AT&T-DirectTV Merger. The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to sign off on AT&T’s proposed merger with DirecTV, Reuters reported. Though the agency is reportedly likely to ask for conditions on the deal, none of them are severe enough to cause AT&T to call off the transaction. Read more[THEHILL.COM]

NOAA NEWS: Flexible Cloud Enables Mammoth Computing. Producing 20 terabytes of data every day, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a prime example of the need for flexibility. And through its Big Data Project, NOAA’s bringing private-sector ingenuity to bear on the age-old problem: How can government get its work into the hands of the people who want it? Read more[FCW.COM]

Federal AgenciesMOBILEIRON PLATFORM: Feds Take Evolutionary Path to Enterprise Mobility Management. he U.S. Department of Agriculture deployed mobile device management a few years ago but quickly recognized it would need more functionality. Janell Duke, deputy director of the USDA’s Infrastructure Operations Division, says that’s why the agency opted for MobileIron. Read more[FEDTECHMAGAZINE.COM]

GITHUB NEWS: NSA Cybersecurity Tool Now Publicly Available. he National Security Agency released a cybersecurity tool publicly to GitHub that lets computers maintain a defined security posture.The tool, called the Systems Integrity Management Platform, or SIMP, was posted on the source code-sharing website to make it easier for government organizations and private industry to use the tool to fortify their networks against cyber threats. Read more [FIERCEGOVERNMENTIT.COM]

Federal Agencies

CLOUD-FIRST: Delivering an Agile, Open Government Cloud for Less. Today, most divisions within the federal government-and many at the state and local levels-have “cloud-first” policies with the goal of migrating much of their IT operations to the cloud. Simply put, not all clouds are created equal-and how you move to the cloud and which cloud you move to can have a dramatic impact on the total cost of ownership (TCO). Read more[MICROSOFT.COM]

FACILITIES: Agencies Drag Employees Toward Open-Office Designs. An exclusive Federal News Radio online survey shows feds are happiest when they work in offices where they can close their doors. Cubicles and open spaces with little separating them from colleagues are a recipe for distraction and lower productivity, they say. Read more[FEDERALNEWSRADIO.COM]

Federal Agencies

CONGRESS NEWS: House Bill Would Halve Digital Services Request At DHS. Lawmakers pushed back on an administration request for $10 million to fund a digital services team inside the Department of Homeland Security as part of a $47.6 billion DHS funding bill the House Appropriations Committee approved 32-17 on July 14th. Read more[FCW.COM]

IT - State & Local Governments

OHIO: Lack Of Technology Hinders Local Communities. Fifteen years into the 21st century, technology, specifically Internet access, has become more and more of a necessity for businesses, schools and private residents. But in rural Coshocton County, reliable connections can be hard to come by. Read more[COSHOCTONTRIBUNE.COM]

DELAWARE: Questions Remain Over Data Center, Power Plant. Despite citizen concerns over potential emissions, noise and a plan that remains in development, a large data center and power plant proposed for Middletown’s Westown area appears to be on track for final approval. Read more[DELAWAREONLINE.COM]

IT - State & Local GovernmentsSOUTH DAKOTA: Elections May Get Faster, Easier In 2016. The state Board of Elections approved use of four additional devices for voting and counting ballots in South Dakota and adopted an assortment of small rule changes for the 2016 elections. They include a basic counting device, a high-speed tabulating device, the company’s version of an AutoMARK machine for persons with disabilities, and the company’s ExpressVote Universal Voting machine that also can be used by persons with disabilities. Read more[RAPIDCITYJOURNAL.COM]

FLORIDA: There’s No Back-Up Plan If Supreme Court Decision Guts Obamacare Subsidies. Many scenarios could play out if the Supreme Court rules that billions of dollars in health insurance subsidies, including an estimated $389 million a month for Florida residents, can only be distributed through exchanges established by a state, as the plaintiffs argue in King v. Burwell. Read more[MIAMIHERALD.COM]

IT - State & Local GovernmentsCRYPTOCURRENCY: How Will BitLicense Pan out for New York? The initial draft of BitLicense was introduced in July 2014, and since then it has undergone some amendments to become what it is now. The initial draft was heavily criticized for being too stringent, up to an extent that it could smother the upcoming digital currency industry to death. The authorities made amendments to address the issues raised about it and in the end, only few of these issues were resolved. Read more[NEWSBTC.COM]

VIRGINIA: Northrop Grumman To Pick Up Half Of Laid-Off VITA Workers. After the recent Virginia Information Technologies Agency lay off of 51 employees, the holder of its main outsourcing contract said it would rehire almost half of them. Northrop Grumman Corp. said it plans to rehire up to 25 of the state employees. Read more[STATESCOOP.COM]

IT - State & Local Governments

TENNESSEE: Jackson One of seven recognized as a Gig City. It took about 11 years, but the payoff for Jackson Energy Authority came during a business summit in Kansas City, Mo., in January. Jackson was named the next “Gig City,” as JEA upgrades its fiber network to offer Internet speeds up to 1 gigabit per second. Read more[JACKSONSUN.COM]

VIRGINIA: State Faces Urgent Decisions On Managing Information Technology. Virginia lawmakers hear the clock ticking on decisions about who will run the state’s vast information system after the scheduled expiration of a more than $2 billion contract with Northrop Grumman in mid-2019. Read more[DAILYPROGRESS.COM]

IT - State & Local GovernmentsNEW JERSEY: Smaller Companies Seek Cybersecurity. When it comes to hacker attacks and data breaches, small businesses are targets, too. In fact, the origin of the infamous Target breach of 2013, which compromised information on 40 million customer credit cards, has been traced to the hacking of the computer system of a refrigeration company in the Pittsburgh area doing work for the Minneapolis-based retailer. Read more[NORTHJERSEY.COM]

UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS: Courts Find Success with Video Conferencing. Used increasingly in legal proceedings, video conferencing is saving courts time and money — a lot of money. According to a press release from Michigan Supreme Court Justice David F. Viviano, the technology helped the Michigan Department of Corrections cache nearly $5 million in the past two years alone. Read more[STATETECHMAGAZINE.COM]

IT - State & Local Governments

CALIFORNIA: State’s Commercial Drone Industry Is Taking Off. As the largest American maker of consumer drones, 3D Robotics Inc. sees big opportunities in selling mini-helicopters with cameras, sensors and whirling propellers that buzz like angry hornets. The Berkeley company expects to sell thousands of the pizza-sized drones — for about $1,000 each — at home and abroad this year. Read more[POSTBULLETIN.COM]

IT Security | Cybersecurity

TECH NEWS: Can We Ever Secure The Cloud? Cloud computing and big data are both taking the world by storm and are hot topics on all technology related conversations. It is no great secret though that the biggest barrier to these technologies really taking off is security. Read more[MOVIETVTECHGEEKS.COM]

MALWARE: Author Behind Ransomware Tox Calls it Quits, Sells Platform. When the author behind the crypto-ransomware Locker apologized and released decryption keys for his victims, it seemed like a change of heart, uncharacteristic for an attacker. Now another ransomware creator has also decided to cut his losses and get out of the game – but not before trying to make a buck. Read more[THREATPOST.COM]

IT Security | CybersecurityCLOUD SECURITY AND MSPs: Hold the Pickle, Add More Lettuce. If you are a managed services provider (MSP), you know that one of the major challenges of providing cloud-based security intelligence or security information and event management (SIEM) is that one particular formula doesn’t fit all. You are serving clients in a rapidly evolving market space, which requires different combinations of on-premises and in-cloud equipment; deployment and management skills… Read more[SECURITYINTELLIGENCE.COM]

BRAINS NOT BRAWN: Lack of STEM Students Is Bad for National Security. As students make their decisions about which colleges to attend and contemplate their eventual majors and careers, it may come as a surprise that their decisions are fundamental to our national security. Read more[USNEWS.COM]

IT Security | CybersecurityCYBERCRIME: New ‘Breaking Bad’ Ransom Trojan Is No Laughing Matter, Says Symantec. Windows users across the English-speaking world have been warned to be on the lookout for a new Trojan campaign that borrows imagery from the TV show Breaking Bad as part of a not-so-amusing attempt to extort money from anyone infected by it. Read more[CSOONLINE.COM]

WHITEPAPER DOWNLOAD: Ransomware – 7 Defensive Strategies. Ransomware attacks fall into two categories: scareware and lockers. Scareware is a social-engineering attack that displays an official- looking notice of a fine, often for the PC having allegedly been used to view pornographic material. Read more[DATABREACHTODAY.COM]

IT Security | CybersecurityLEADERSHIP: Four Big Cyber Security Challenges (And How To Overcome Them). As cyber attacks coming from these organized rings become more complex and effective — and as data becomes an increasingly important resource for businesses — cyber security has risen to the top of executives’ concerns. Read more[FORBES.COM]

SANS INSTITUTE REPORT: Critical Security Controls for Effective Cyber Defense. Over the years, many security standards and requirements frameworks have been developed in attempts to address risks to enterprise systems and the critical data in them. However, most of these efforts have essentially become exercises in reporting on compliance and have actually diverted security program resources from the constantly evolving attacks that must be addressed. Read more[SANS.ORG]

IT Security | Cybersecurity

QUICK STEPS: Taking A Security Program From Zero To Hero. Breaking the enigma of InfoSec into smaller bites is a proven method for building up an organization’s security capabilities. Here are six steps to get you started. Read more[DARKREADING.COM]

SOFTWARE PLATFORMS: Remotely Exploitable Vulnerabilities in SAP Compression Algorithms. The two primary compression algorithms used by SAP SE products, some of the most popular enterprise and business management software platforms on the market, contain multiple, remotely exploitable security vulnerabilities. Read more[THREATPOST.COM]

IT Security | CybersecurityRANSOMWARE THREAT: TeslaCrypt Used To Extort Over $76K In Recent Months. Cybercriminals have pocketed substantial payments from victims infected by TeslaCrypt, a relatively new ransomware threat known for being distributed through the Angler Exploit Kit (EK). Read more[SCMAGAZINE.COM]

FAST FEED: Want To Make More Money? Get A Cybersecurity Job. A new salary survey indicates that working in cybersecurity—i.e., dealing with script-deploying teenagers and pesky Chinese economic intelligence projects—pays quite well. Tripwire, a Portland-based threat detection firm that markets threat detection tools to Fortune 500 corporations, recently published a guide to top-paying jobs in information security… Read more[FASTCOMPANY.COM]

IT Security | CybersecurityFEDERAL CYBERSECURITY: Not Even Good Enough for Government Work. On June 4, OPM revealed that hackers (most likely backed by the Chinese government) had ransacked its computers for months, stealing the personally identifiable information of between 4 million to 18 million federal government applicants and employees. Read more[REASON.COM]

APPLICATION SECURITY: What Do You Mean My Security Tools Don’t Work on APIs?!! SAST and DAST scanners haven’t advanced much in 15 years. But the bigger problem is that they were designed for web apps, not to test the security of an API. Read more[DARKREADING.COM]

IT Security | CybersecurityEDWARD SNOWDEN: NSA, British Counterpart Targeted Cybersecurity Firms. The U.S. and United Kingdom have been trying to find ways around anti-virus and security software by surreptitiously studying the products and the companies that make them, according to various published reports. Moscow-based security software maker Kaspersky Lab is one of the prime targets of the effort, according to a report at ZDNet.com. Read more[C4ISRNET.COM]

NEW EXCHANGE TICKER: Cybersecurity Fund Boosted By A Rise In Data Breaches. A new exchange-traded fund that taps into the cybersecurity market has skyrocketed to $1-billion (U.S.) in assets under management in just seven months. With the crafty ticker name HACK, the PureFunds ISE Cyber Security ETF mimics the ISE Cyber Security Index, which tracks the performance of companies actively engaged in providing services for cybersecurity… Read more[GLOBEANDMAIL.COM]

IT Security | CybersecurityCOMPLIANCE: Four Steps To Implementing New SEC Cybersecurity Guidelines. In April the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Investment Management released cybersecurity guidance for registered investment firms and advisors. It was hardly a surprise. The SEC has shown increasing interest in cybersecurity in recent years, urging publicly traded companies to discuss cyber risks and disclose data breaches in public filings. Read more[FORBES.COM]

BUSINESS REPORT: When A Data Breach Hits, Enterprises Turn To Outside Firms To Pick Up The Pieces. CIOs and CISOs are tasked with defending and protecting corporate enterprises in an increasingly hostile cyberscape. Companies across all industries worldwide reported a total of 42.8 million detected attacks last year, according to the PWC Global State of Information Security Survey 2015. That’s a 48 percent increase in incidents since the prior year. Read more[CSOONLINE.COM]

IT Security | CybersecurityNEW INITIATIVE: Google Dials In on Citywide Wi-Fi With Old Phone Booths — But Is Security on the Line? When tech companies want to dig deep and innovate, they hole up in Silicon Valley. When it’s time to make headlines, however, there’s a different destination: New York City. Search giant Google is the latest to roll out a new project in the Big Apple with the launch of LinkNYC, which aims to repurpose more than 10,000 payphones and turn them into so-called Wi-Fi pylons. Read more[SECURITYINTELLIGENCE.COM]

HOW TO: Find The Best Cyber Security Insurance For Your Firm. A robust cyber security insurance policy can be tricky to procure, even for the most meticulous wealth management firms. Interest in cyber insurance has surged over the past year following a number of high-profile hackings, including one announced earlier this month involving the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Read more[ REUTERS.COM]

IT Security | Cybersecurity

REALITY CHECK: Use of Shadow IT Is 10 Times Higher Than Believed. A newly released report from Skyhigh Networks reveals some startling numbers: The average public-sector leader believes his or her organization uses 60 to 70 shadow technology solutions, but in reality the number is 10 times that. Read more[STATETECH.COM]

Popular Android Games On Google Play Observed Stealing Facebook Credentials. Researchers with two security firms independently observed apps on the Google Play store that are stealing Facebook credentials, and one of the apps has been downloaded by up to a million Android users. Read more[SCMAGAZINE.COM]

IT Security | CybersecurityCRYPTOLOCKER VARIANT: New Version of TeslaCrypt Changes Encryption Scheme. A new version of the nasty TeslaCrypt ransomware is making the rounds, and the creators have added several new features, including an improved encryption scheme and some details designed to mimic CryptoWall. Read more[THREATPOST.COM]

STOLEN IN A FLASH: Zero Day Exploit Taken In Hacking Team Breach Now In The Wild. We’ve all seen the movies: A research lab keeps hazardous biological agents contained in its facilities, where it studies them. Then, somehow, there’s a breach in security and those dangerous substances fall into the hands of terrorists or other bad guys, who use them to wreak havoc. Read more[GFI.COM]

IT Security | CybersecuritySYMANTEC PARTNERSHIP: Company Launches IoT And Big Data Incubator Program For Security Ideas. As companies continue to stress about cybersecurity threats that could lead to damaged brands, security giant Symantec Corp. is partnering with a venture capital firm to create and seed early stage startups in key areas with funding, resources and expertise. Read more[BIZJOURNALS.COM]

CYBER INCIDENT UPDATE: OPM Announces Steps To Protect Workers From Cyber Threats. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, has announced the results of the interagency forensics investigation into a recent cyber incident involving federal background investigation data and the steps it is taking to protect those impacted.Read more [ARMY.MIL]

IT Security | CybersecurityMALWARE: New Configuration of the Dyre Trojan Coming After 17 Spanish Banks. As Europeans head to the beaches of Spain this summer, the cybercriminals behind the highly successful Dyre malware are not taking a break. In fact, they are turning up the heat and have set their sights on 17 Spanish banks, and several European banks’ Spain-based subsidiaries. Read more[SECURITYINTELLIGENCE.COM]

FBI MEMO: Phishing Attacks Targeting Govt Agencies Linked To Hacking Team Breach. The FBI has received information regarding a likely ongoing phishing campaign that started 08 July 2015 and was observed targeting US government agencies. This campaign is similar to a June campaign launched by similar malicious actors. In both campaigns, the e-mails contain a link that exploits Adobe Flash vulnerability CVE-2015-5119. Read more[CSOONLINE.COM]

Web DevelopmentACCESSIBILITY: Even Tiny Updates to Tech Can Be Obstacles for the Disabled. When the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed 25 years ago, it was intended to usher in a new age of accessibility. It promised recourse from discrimination in employment, transportation and communication—in other words, greater access to the physical world. Since then, the world has evolved in radical ways. Read more[WIRED.COM]

Network SecurityDATA TRACKING: Do You Know Where Your Sensitive Data Lives? Challenges with tracking where sensitive and regulated data is flowing, and the inability to control that flow in outsourced environments such as SaaS cloud applications, where it can move freely between data centers and cloud provider’s partner’s systems, is a key challenge for enterprises in regulated sectors.Read more[NET-SECURITY.ORG]

CHECKLIST: Eight Things You Need to Know Before Deploying a Cyber-Threat Intelligence Solution. Protecting against cyber-attacks is proving to be a real challenge. A few years ago, defense-in-depth was the recommended methodology to successfully fight cyber-attacks. Despite the proliferation of defense-in-depth mechanisms, a large number of high profile cyber-attacks are still observed. Read more[INFOSECURITY-MAGAZINE.COM]

Network Security

CISCO SUBNET: Security Is a Prisoner of the Network. Cybersecurity professionals must gain experience and get comfortable with virtual network security. Read more[NETWORKWORLD.COM]

TECH DISTRIBUTION COUNCIL: Top 10 Best-Selling Network Security Products In Q1 2015. This quarter’s top-selling network security products included the best of the best from Cisco, Juniper, SonicWall, NetGear and Fortinet, according to data from Port Washington, N.Y.-based NPD Group, which compiles data in its DistributorTrack sales database from leading distributors in the U.S. Global Technology Distribution Council. Read more[CRN.COM]

Network Security

CUSTOMER PRIVACY: United Airlines Launches Bug Bounty Program. It’s the first of its kind in the airline industry — United Airlines is launching a bug bounty program that aims to protect Relevant Products/Services customer personal data Relevant Products/Services and privacy. But at least one technology market watcher said the timing could reflect negatively on the airline. Read more[CIO-TODAY.COM]

GOVERNMENT INVESTMENTS: Mozilla Pushes Web Sites To Adopt Encryption. The organization behind the Firefox Web browser wants to see Web site encryption become standard practice, and it has laid out a two-part plan to help that happen. Mozilla said it plans to set a date by which all new features for its browser will be available only to secure Web sites. Read more[TOPTECHNEWS.COM]

Agile Development

METHODOLOGY: How Being More Agile Can Help You Juggle Your Business Demands More Efficiently. In the era of the cloud, software is at the forefront of business activities, from monitoring company accounts to facilitating web conferences and driving sales. It’s strange given how critical it is to the business that so few actually understand the practice of software development and the different options available to them. Read more[INFORMATION-AGE.COM]

AGILE VS. WATERFALL: When Is Each Approach To Software Requirements Best? Establishing software requirements can be challenging. It is not easy to gain a good understanding of customer requirements, let alone document and maintain those requirements when they change over time. Read more[TECHTARGET.COM]

Agile Development

MISCONCEPTIONS: The Top 10 Myths About Agile Development. To be flexible has become vital for a business in today’s global markets, and therefore, the ability for IT systems to be equally flexible is essential. The purpose of agile is to allow organisations to react to the increasingly dynamic opportunities and challenges of today’s business world, in which IT has become one of the key enablers. Read more[COMPUTERWEEKLY.COM]

ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE: Introducing The Scaled Agile Framework. These days, some software teams have hundreds of programmers. Many of them are on multi-year projects and working on ongoing programs — software that might have a shelf life of more than a decade. Those projects are complex, in-flight and with no easy concept of done. Read more[CIO.COM]

Enterprise Security

EXPERT ADVICE: Four Enterprise Scenarios For Deploying Database Security Tools. Database security tools are incredibly versatile, offering benefits for security, compliance and even operations. These products, available from third parties, provide a level of database security well beyond what relational database management system (RDBMS) vendors offer customers. Read more[TECHTARGET.COM]

PRIVACY: Companies Averaging 4 Insider-Threat Attacks Per Year. When it comes to insider IT security threats, the third time is definitely not the charm. In fact, the typical organization now experiences 3.8 insider security incidents on an annual basis. Read more[FIERCECIO.COM]

Enterprise Security

SURVEY FINDINGS: Most Enterprises Don’t Fix 60 Percent of Security Vulnerabilities. Waratek, the application protection and management company, announced the results of a survey conducted at the Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit 2015. Two-thirds of senior security professionals polled said they remediate 40 percent or less of the security vulnerabilities discovered by software application security testing tools. Read more[DARKREADING.COM]

BREACH PREVENTION: Big Security Breaches and How Big Data Can Prevent Them. In the abstract, network and systems security is easy. We all agree that keeping bad actors out of your electronic world is a no-brainer. We also all agree that there are different rights levels that should be assigned to different user groups. Finally, we all agree that certain systems contain more valuable data than others. Read more[ENTERPRISENETWORKINGPLANET.COM]

Big DataPREDICTIVE ANALYTICS: SAP Kills Two Birds With One Stone. Global software giant SAP SE recently announced that its Predictive Analytics Software has been upgraded to include integration for big data and Internet of Things (IoT) analytics. The stronger integration of SAP HANA analytics with IoT serves the increasing number of customers that apply analytics to the enormous amount of data generated in IoT applications. Read more[FORBES.COM]

BEST PRACTICES: Is Big Data Analytics Good Or Evil? Given the NSA scandal, regular data breaches and even stories of TVs spying on private conversations, it is not surprising that the public is becoming more distrustful of data practices. Among Americans, 91 percent agree that consumers have lost control over how personal information is collected and used by companies, and 61 percent want to do more to protect their data online. Read more[VENTUREBEAT.COM]

Big DataHOW-TO: Hadoop Keeps Even Small Businesses In the Loop for Big Data Analytics. Every company that conducts physical and electronic transactions has access to big data, but it was not until recently that corporate leaders began to fully recognize big data’s potential to help them to forecast trends needed to improve competitive advantage.Read more[BUSINESS2COMMUNITY.COM]

EXPERT ADVICE: How To Manage Projects In Predictive Analytics. In the previous five years, the analytical scene has been dominated by the prediction that we would soon experience an important shortage of analytical talent. As a result, academic programs and massive open online courses (MOOCs) have sprung up like mushrooms after the rain, all with the purpose of developing skills for the analyst… Read more[PREDICTIVEANALYTICSWORLD.COM]

Databases

FOR NON-PROGRAMMERS: FileMaker 14 – A Database For DIY Apps. n the enterprise software world we spend a lot of time talking about the big guns — Oracle, IBM DB2, SAP HANA, and the like. Those are critical as the foundations for large enterprise applications, but there are thousands of applications that organizations need that require a database. Read more[INFORMATIONWEEK.COM]

TIME FOR CHANGE: How Amazon’s DynamoDB Helped Reinvent Databases. In the earliest days of Amazon.com SQL databases weren’t cutting it, so the company created DynamoDB and in doing so helped usher in the NoSQL market. Read more[NETWORK.COM]

Databases

INNOVATION: Coding, Agile & Scrum Go Mainstream. “Software,” we learned from Mark Andreessen in 2011, “is eating the world.” In the process, software is eating up organizations and executives who don’t understand it or know how to manage it. Read more[FORBES.COM]

ANALYTICS: Building a Data Storage Scalable Platform. In the beginning there were files, a lot of files. People were trying to utilize them for all of their data needs. They would store spreadsheets (and they keep doing it even now), data tables, structured and unstructured data, binary data — and anything their wonderful computer programs would produce. And there were business transactions, a lot of them. Read more[ICRUNCHDATANEWS.COM]

Databases

BIG DATA: Oracle’s Biggest Database Foe: Could It Be Postgres? Once upon a time, Oracle could dismiss open-source databases as test and development toys that couldn’t compete when it came to mission-critical production. Unfortunately, reality hasn’t been kind to that supposition. Read more[TECHREPUBLIC.COM]

MICROSOFT AZURE: Is It A Threat To Amazon.com, Inc. Web Services? Amazon.com, Inc.’s Web Services (AWS) currently has 11 geographic locations and a large portion of the public cloud storage for enterprises and other organizations. Moreover, it has three popular cloud server models widely used in the world: Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS), and Software as a service (SaaS). Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) Azure also offers similar services with a few technical differences compared to AWS. Read more[CIO.COM]

Databases

2016 RELEASE: SQL Server Management Studio Now Has Its Own Upgrade Path. For years we’ve been lamenting the lack of modernization and updates applied to SQL Server Management Studio. It appears Microsoft has listened and is not providing a pipeline for separating upgrade cadences of SQL Server Management Studio from the full product suite. Read more[SQLMAG.COM]

POWER BI: Getting Data from Analysis Services. Microsoft Power BI is a cloud based self-service BI solution for the enterprise. Power BI provides capabilities that can be leveraged by people with all level of skills including data analyst, power users, business users, data stewards and folks from the IT department. Read more[DATABASEJOURNAL.COM]

IT Help Desk Support

USER SURVEY: SaaS Help Desk Is A Must-Have. Cloud based help desk software lets you automate the management of your IT support, customer support, and IT assets. And it’s moving beyond its nice-to-have status and fast becoming a must-have application for companies of all sizes. That’s what my company, ManageEngine, discovered in a recent user survey — and that discovery means different things to different people. Read more[CLOUDTWEAKS.COM]

GOOD NEWS: Surprise! Help Desk Satisfaction Rates Are Better Than You Might Think. “Hello, IT. Have you tried turning it on and off again?” The very first scene from the popular Britcom The IT Crowd sums up how both IT support staff and the typical end user seeking help is often perceived, but reality paints both in a better light, according to a new survey conducted by Landesk. Read more[ITWORLDCANADA.COM]

IT Help Desk Support

ENHANCED CUSTOMER SERVICE: Salesforce Launches Desk.com Business Plus. Salesforce, the Customer Success Platform and world’s #1 CRM company, today announced Desk.com Business Plus, the newest edition of the all-in-one customer support app that enables fast-growing SMBs to scale while meeting the evolving demands of their customers. Business Plus is based on feedback and best practices of some of Desk.com’s fastest-growing, most successful customers. Read more[PRNEWSWIRE.COM]

FORECAST: Global Helpdesk Outsourcing Market Bubble Will Continue To Grow To 2019. THE Global Helpdesk Outsourcing Market 2015-2019 Report has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and profile of key vendors operating in this market. Read more[WHATECH.COM]

Password Security

PASSWORD ALTERNATIVES: What’s on the Horizon? It seems like once a week, we see yet another story about a security failure involving passwords. In May alone, for instance, the news came that an unpatched vulnerability in Oracle’s PeopleSoft could open a hole for thieves to steal passwords; Google revealed that those security questions that help you retrieve a lost password are anything but secure; and Starbucks blamed passwords for its own recent hack attack. Read more[ITBUSINESSEDGE.COM]

HYPR ENGINEERING: Biometric Authentication Without The Insecurity. On the surface, using biometric signatures (i.e., biological features that are exclusive to each individual) seems like a great idea. Good-bye passwords. A simple fingerprint or a selfie, and that’s it. What’s not to like? It’s convenient and secure. Read more[TECHREPUBLIC.COM]

Password Security

LASTPASS HACK: It Reinforces Importance Of Using Multi-Factor Authentication. Every password and identity aggregator is a top target. That’s a given. And yet, millions of users rely on password management tools simply as a result of the need to keep up with the overwhelming number of online resources we all find ourselves using. Read more[ZDNET.COM]

SQRL: Revolutionizing Web Site Login And Authentication. Keeping your identity safe online can be difficult in many ways. There are different techniques hackers can use to get at your passwords, from malware already on your system, to psychologically manipulating you into performing actions, divulging confidential information or by exhaustive effort of trial and error guessing, rather than employing intellectual strategies. Read more[GLOBEANDMAIL.COM]

Software & Operating SystemsMAGIC TECH: Hyperlapse Smooths Out Android Phone Shaky Cams. Last August, Microsoft showed off a seemingly magic technology called hyperlapse. The promise of the prototype was to make even the shakiest videos buttery smooth. Within two weeks, Instagram put out a Hyperlapse app of its own for iOS. Read more[WIRED.COM]

FOR PIRATES: No, You Can’t Have Windows 10 For Free. Free Windows 10 is not really going to be free for everyone. Computers that aren’t running a genuine, paid-for earlier version of Windows will not be eligible for the upgrade, Windows boss Terry Myerson clarified in a recent blog post. Read more[BUSINESSINSIDER.COM]

Software & Operating SystemsGOODBYE IE: With The Launch Of Its Edge Browser, Microsoft Ends An Antitrust Era. In a detailed blog post recently, the team developing Microsoft’s new Windows 10 web browser detailed some of the security improvements it will usher in with the launch of Microsoft Edge.In its antitrust arguments, Microsoft insisted that Internet Explorer was “integrated” into Windows as a core feature that couldn’t be removed. Read more[ZDNET.COM]

INDUSTRY WATCH: Successful Software Development. Software is how organizations compete in today’s marketplace. New companies like Uber and Airbnb are invading existing businesses, using the power of software and services to succeed in this sharing economy. Read more[SDTIMES.COM]

Software & Operating SystemsOUTSOURCING: Communication and Cultural Understanding Key to Software Development Innovation. Getting software development right in an outsourced environment can be tricky, but in the nearshore context time zone and cultural affinity combined with the ability to create blended teams minimizes some of those challenges. Read more[NEARSHOREAMERICAS.COM]

TESTING PLATFORM: Is Microsoft Testing Our Software, Seriously? Building software is important, but that ‘build’ word is just one of several components in the so-called software application development and operations lifecycle. The whole process should ideally be a system of plan, code, build, test, release, deploy, use and then monitor… Read more[FORBES.COM]

Personal Tech

MOBILE APPS: Google Play Will Allow Pre-Registration For Upcoming Android Apps. Google has introduced a pre-registration feature for upcoming apps on the Google Play Store. “Terminator Genisys: Revolution” by Glu Mobile will be the first app to use the feature, which will allow players to see upcoming apps listed on the Google Play Store. Read more[TECHTIMES.COM]

CABLE NEWS: Comcast Puts Money Where Customer Service Mouth Is. Remember the Comcast customer service fiasco last summer? One of the cable company’s service agents apparently crossed the line of acceptable retention efforts, hassling a former Engadget editor, Ryan Block, who wanted to cancel his service. Block exposed the experience, giving Comcast a black eye.Find out more[TOPTECHNEWS.COM]

Personal Tech

BYOD AND MOBILITY: Why We Shouldn’t Put Too Much Faith In Personal Technology For The Enterprise. Here’s the age old problem. Before the advent of BYOD, you had employees on mobile devices unsuited to them, not working to the best of their ability as a result. By utilizing their home technology for work purposes, they could get all their tasks done. Right? Find out more[APPSTECHNEWS.COM]

MEET LILY: The $499 ‘Selfie Drone’ That’s Your Personal Videographer. Yes, in 2015 we have drones to take selfies for us, because maintaining the perfect duckface while tapping a touchscreen button are sorely testing humanity’s multi-tasking capabilities. Read more[THEGUARDIAN.COM]

Personal Tech

TECH REVIEW: BitTorrent’s Bleep Is a Messaging App Built for Secrecy. Yes, you read that right, BitTorrent-the same company behind everybody’s favorite music, movie and TV show, uh, sharing technology. It’s in the middle of refashioning itself into an upstanding consumer tech company. Read more[BLOGS.WSJ.COM]

Technology NewsWIFI EXPLOIT: Security Flaw Lets Attackers Cripple Your iPhone And There’s No Way To Stop Them. Wondering how difficult it is for attackers to cripple your iPhone? The answer isn’t going to make you happy — in a nutshell, all the have to do is create a Wi-Fi network. That’s right, thanks to a newly detailed security flaw in iOS, malicious hackers can send an iPhone into an endless reboot loop simply by creating a Wi-Fi network. Read more[BGR.COM]

ADD-ONS: Disney Is Using Ultrasonic Sound-Waves To Develop Next Generation Smartphone Accessories. Companies and researchers are always trying to find innovative ways to expand the smartphones and tablets we use everyday, whether it’s a new app or some kind of hardware accessory. And now, a team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Disney Research are leveraging ultrasonic audio coming from our devices in order to develop new kinds of interactive mobile controllers. Read more [CSOONLINE.COM]

Technology NewsTECH AND PAY: How Technology Has Affected Wages for the Last 200 Years. Today’s great paradox is that we feel the impact of technology everywhere — in our cars, our phones, the supermarket, the doctor’s office — but not in our paychecks. Read more[HBR.ORG]

TECH JOBS: Why People Who Put Data Scientist On Their Linkedin Profiles Earn More Money. As the White House’s first chief data scientist, Patil — widely credited with coining the term “data scientist” — has become a high-profile champion of the Obama administration’s open data efforts. The possibilities are seemingly endless for data science, Patil explained during his speech. And a lot of that has to do with ambiguous nature of the role. Read more[NEXTGOV.COM]

Technology NewsSTRATEGY: How A Jacksonville Tech Firm Doubled Its Workforce In Less Than A Year. What do you do when you’re a Jacksonville tech company competing in the same niche space as a Panama City tech company that’s going under? Read more[BIZJOURNALS.COM]

Technology TrendsPRODUCTIVE MEETINGS: The Top 10 Technology Trends Influencing Meetings Are… What do social media, mood lighting, geofencing, and drones have in common? They’re all technologies driving meetings and events this year, according to the International Association of Conference Centres (IACC), which recently published its list of the “Top 10 Meeting Tech Trends” for 2015. Read more[SUCCESSFULMEETINGS.COM]

LONDON: Meet the Future of Disruptive Event Tech. US-based speaker, consultant and writer Corbin Ball addressed a series of event technology trends during his keynote speech at Meet The Future in London recently. Read more[EVENTMAGAZINE.COM]

Technology TrendsPEW RESEARCH: Stop Designing for Millennials. It seems like every company is trying to tap into the Millennial market. And for good reason: this year, Pew is predicting they will overtake the Baby Boomers in number, with around 75 million people in the U.S. under 34. And they are reaching an age of independent consumption, starting to hae children, and becoming a presence in the workforce. Read morevAre Taking Over Investment Advice. In recent years automated investment advisors have [HBR.ORG]

AUTOMATED INVESTMENT ADVISORS: Robots, stodgy and personality-driven the new way is designed to be cheap, tech-centrturned long held assumptions about financial management upside down. If the old way was priceyic and person-free. Read more[FORBES.COM]

Technology TrendsMICROSOFT: Releases Office for Mac 2016, Pledges Better Support for OS X. Microsoft is notorious for leaving Office for Mac users languishing for years between app updates. Now, five years after the last Mac edition, the company is officially releasing Office for Mac 2016 to subscribers of Office 365, and promises that the Mac will be less neglected in the future. Read more[WSJ.COM]

USEFUL GADGETS: Glasses That Help You Sleep Better. Tired? Of course you are. According to an amazing array of studies, we’re all a lot more exhausted than we used to be. Blame our modern lifestyle, experts say, with our decreased activity levels, insufficient time outdoors exposed to daylight and increased screen time. Read more[OZY.COM]

Technology TrendsSAFE CITIES: New York City Asks Google Maps To Discourage Left Turns. Seventeen pedestrians and three bicyclists were killed in the city last year by vehicles making left-hand turns, according to WNYC data.To help reduce the number of deaths, several NYC officials reportedly wrote Google a letter on July 1, asking it to include an option on Google Maps that reduces the number of left-hand turns suggested by the navigation app when driving to a destination. Read more[MASHABLE.COM]

WRIST READY: The Future For Wearable Growth Will Be In The Workplace. Business, not consumers, will grow wearables sector. Wearables in the workplace may not have the media profile enjoyed by their consumer siblings, but the market for business-facing devices is expected to reach $8.5 billion by 2020, says a recent report. Read more[APPLAUSE.COM]

Search Engine OptimizationINFORMATION SECURITY: Investigating The Negative SEO Threat. The world of search engine optimization (SEO) is one where the rules are constantly changing. The big search providers change their criteria for ranking sites and individuals who understand SEO then modify Web pages and processes for promoting their sites, so these sites can appear in more search results and gain more business. Read more[POWERMORE.DELL.COM]

NO QUICK FIX: 4 Things Most Leaders Don’t Understand About SEO. In an online business environment that’s heavily dependent on organic search, the lack of an effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is detrimental to your growth and profitability. In this column, we will look at three SEO facts that business leaders should know to achieve excellent results. Read more[SEARCHENGINELAND.COM]

Search Engine OptimizationMYTHBUSTERS: The 7 Most Common SEO Myths Debunked. With search engines, social-media platforms and content-recommendation services all touting their pay-per-click options to instantly boost traffic to your website, search engine optimization (SEO) sometimes gets forgotten. But it shouldn’t. SEO can provide a huge benefit to entrepreneurs — even if the results aren’t immediate. Read more[ENTREPRENEUR.COM]

Enterprise NewsUSABILITY: Enterprise Software Companies Need to be Customer Centric. Many enterprise software firms are working at improving the usability of their solutions. Further, many enterprise software firms, have embraced the cloud. Read more[FORBES.COM]

UX NEWS: 4 Consumerization Trends That Are Changing Enterprise Software as We Know It. Enterprise software is in the midst of a revolution. In the early 2000s, businesses were the primary users of technology, and they set the rules for how it should be built. The result was clunky, feature-rich software that no one apart from a few power users knew how to use. Read more[ENTREPRENEUR.COM]

Enterprise NewsGOOGLE’S SCHMIDT TO DEVS: Challenge Legacy Enterprise Software. Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt believes there is a big opportunity for software developers building enterprise solutions that combine mobility, ultra-fast connectivity, and true cloud-based services. Read more[PCMAG.COM]

TRANSFORMATION: Connecting Architecture to Business Strategy. Enterprise Architecture, when done well, is a business transformation practice. Transforming a business is not about slogans, mission statements, slick PowerPoints or in-depth strategy documents. It’s about execution and actually changing business operations. Read more[COMPUTERWORLD.COM]

Enterprise NewsBIG DATA: Much Ado about Hyperscale Architectures. Many organizations are looking forward to the future of hyperscale networking. Even if you are not a cloud-scale enterprise like Amazon and Google, you can still capitalize on the ability to manage and manipulate large data stores over a highly commoditized, distributed architecture. Read more[ENTERPRISENETWORKINGPLANET.COM]

IT BUDGETS: The Enterprise Technologies To Watch In 2015. It is impressive how much the enterprise technology landscape has changed in just a year. While some priorities remain unchanged, important new players have emerged that business and IT leaders must consider in their plans this year. Read more[ZDNET.COM]

Enterprise NewsC-SUITE GOALS: New Battleground In Enterprise Technology. Businesses today are grabbling with the challenge of using new technologies and new sets of data to improve performance, create excellent customer experiences, and empower their staff to innovate and collaborate more fluidly, says Vishal Barapatre, CTO In2IT Technologies South Africa. Read more[IT-ONLINE.COM]

Mobile Apps & DevelopmentENTERPRISE APPS: 7 Mobile App Development Best Practices. The enterprise mobile app developer is under constant pressure. There is a growing backlog of mobile apps to build and expectations to deliver faster than ever. Technology and tools are evolving rapidly and making it difficult to even get started, let alone deliver fast. Read more[ENTERPRISEAPPSTODAY.COM]

DIGITAL ADS: Amazon Unveils Advertising Platform for Mobile-App Developers. Amazon.com Inc. unveiled a new advertising platform for mobile-applications developers, a push by the largest Web retailer to grab a bigger piece of the smartphone advertising market dominated by Google Inc. and Facebook Inc.Read more[BLOOMBERG.COM]

Mobile Apps & DevelopmentSTARBUCKS VERDICT: Mobile App Not Hacked, Get a Stronger Password. According to a report from blogger Bob Sullivan, some Starbucks app-using customers have found that nefarious folk have found a way to break into their online accounts. Once inside, they add new gift cards and transfer funds from a person’s bank, taking advantage of Starbucks’ auto-reloading feature to basically siphon hundreds of dollars from a person. Read more[PCMAG.COM]

MOBILE APPS: Codeless Development Is One Solution To Rising Costs, Delays In Enterprise App Deployment. The demand for mobile apps in the enterprise has surged, but companies have trouble keeping up with demand due to a lack of skilled in-house mobile programmers, as well as app development costs and delays. Read more[FIERCEMOBILEIT.COM]

Mobile Apps & DevelopmentHYBRID VS. NATIVE: Understanding The Hybrid Technology Of Mobile Application Development. We all are aware of the term hybrid. It’s mixture two or more. In mobile application development, hybrid means the same. An application based on hybrid technology is the blend two technologies known as web development and native mobile application development. Read more[WHATECH.COM]

GROWTH AND CHANGE: Trends Emerge In The World Of App Development. The app development world is always growing and changing. As more people turn to apps on their mobile devices, it’s only natural that app development should grow and change with the times, too. Read more[HOSTREVIEW.COM]

Mobile Apps & DevelopmentLATEST GENERATION: The New Era Of App Development – Mobile Vs. Legacy. Mobile applications have come a long way. Just 15 years ago you were lucky to have the game Snake installed on your phone – today, mobile apps have become so integral to both working and daily lives that it’s hard to believe people were happy with such limited options. Read more[INFORMATION-AGE.COM]

BUSINESS SPIN-OFF: PayPal’s New Chief Promises New Services for a Mobile World. As PayPal prepares to split from its corporate parent, its new chief executive is promising to expand the popular online payment system, adding a variety of services for consumers to use when shopping on their phones or in traditional stores. Read more[TOPTECHNEWS.COM]

Mobile Apps & DevelopmentTECH REPORT: Next Version Of Android Will Let You Log Into Apps With A Fingerprint. Say goodbye to remembering long passwords. The next version of Android — tentatively called Android M — will reportedly include “native fingerprint authentication,” according to a report from BuzzFeed. Read more[MASHABLE.COM]

Website DevelopmentFOR DEVELOPERS: Google’s Polymer 1.0 Brings Reuse And Better Branding. Web developers are attracted by its simplicity. Traditionally, developers create Web pages with a combination of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, which can be difficult to modify, debug, maintain and reuse. Polymer encapsulates these three languages into functional component elements from which Web pages can be constructed…Read more[CIO.COM]

HTML GOODIES: Playback And 60 FPS Live Stream Comes To YouTube. YouTube will begin streaming video games at 60 FPS, using HTML5 technology. The development could put YouTube on par with the likes of Twitch when it comes to video-game streaming. Read more[TECHTIMES.COM]

Website DevelopmentCOMPARISON: . A common question asked by mobile app developers is this, ‘Should I build my app with HTML 5, or build native?’. There are a wide range of reasons why you would choose either of these, and the proponents of both have very valid and compelling arguments. Read more[ANDROIDAUTHORITY.COM]

From the Blue Mountain Data Systems Blog

Three-Dimensional Governance for the CIOhttps://www.bluemt.com/three-dimensional-governance-for-the-cio

7 Reasons to Take Control of IT Incidentshttps://www.bluemt.com/7-reasons-to-take-control-of-it-incidents/

Breach Mitigation Response Time Too Long, Survey Sayshttps://www.bluemt.com/breach-mitigation-response-time-too-long-survey-says/

Six Tactics for Cyberdefensehttps://www.bluemt.com/six-tactics-for-cyberdefense/

From the Blue Mountain Data Systems Blog

Feds Report Mixed Responses to Shared Serviceshttps://www.bluemt.com/feds-report-mixed-responses-to-shared-services

Federal Employees Are Not Security Expertshttps://www.bluemt.com/federal-employees-are-not-security-experts

Survival Guide for Network Administratorshttps://www.bluemt.com/survival-guide-for-network-administrators

DBaaS: OpenStack Trove Changes DB Managementhttps://www.bluemt.com/dbaas-openstack-trove-changes-db-management

From the Blue Mountain Data Systems Blog

Help Wanted: Certified Cybersecurity Professionalshttps://www.bluemt.com/help-wanted-certified-cybersecurity-professionals

Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center Previewhttps://www.bluemt.com/cyber-threat-intelligence-integration-center-preview/

Cloud Moves in 1-2-3https://www.bluemt.com/cloud-moves-in-1-2-3/

Change Management for Disaster Recoveryhttps://www.bluemt.com/change-management-for-disaster-recovery/

From the Blue Mountain Data Systems Blog

Jeffersonian Advice For C-Suite Career Advancementhttps://www.bluemt.com/jeffersonian-advice-for-c-suite-career-advancement/

Ways To Survive The “Mobile-Pocalypse”https://www.bluemt.com/ways-to-survive-the-mobile-pocalypse/

Microsoft Cloud Services Receive FedRAMP Authority to Operatehttps://www.bluemt.com/microsoft-cloud-services-receive-fedramp-authority-to-operate/

Hiring Pentesters? Here Are 10 Things You Need to Knowhttps://www.bluemt.com/hiring-pentesters-here-are-10-things-you-need-to-know/

From the Blue Mountain Data Systems Blog

Home Router Malware Alerthttps://www.bluemt.com/home-router-malware-alert/

Threat Model Deconstructionhttps://www.bluemt.com/threat-model-deconstruction/

Business Email Scam Nets $214 Millionhttps://www.bluemt.com/business-email-scam-nets-214-million/

How to Prevent Unauthorized Software from Taking Over Your Organizationhttps://www.bluemt.com/the-cios-guide-to-happy-end-users-2/

From the Blue Mountain Data Systems Blog

Digital Marketing Predictions for 2015https://www.bluemt.com/digital-marketing-predictions-for-2015/

SDN: Network Administrator’s Friend or Foe?https://www.bluemt.com/sdn-network-administrators-friend-or-foe/

Mobile Payments: A Must for Federal Agencieshttps://www.bluemt.com/mobile-payments-a-must-for-federal-agencies/

Soft Skills Are A Must-Have For Careers In IThttps://www.bluemt.com/soft-skills-are-a-must-have-for-careers-in-it/

From the Blue Mountain Data Systems Blog

Security Risks Most Prevalent in Younger Workershttps://www.bluemt.com/security-risks-most-prevalent-in-younger-workers/

The Security World’s Maturationhttps://www.bluemt.com/the-security-worlds-maturation/

Data Breach Concerns Keep CISOs Up At Nighthttps://www.bluemt.com/data-breach-concerns-keep-cisos-up-at-night/

Personalized Govt Equals Instant Gratification for Citizenshttps://www.bluemt.com/personalized-govt-equals-instant-gratification-for-citizens/

From the Blue Mountain Data Systems Blog

People-Centric Securityhttps://www.bluemt.com/people-centric-security/

Pentagon Tries BYOD To Strike Work/Life Balancehttps://www.bluemt.com/pentagon-tries-byod-to-strike-worklife-balance/

Open Source Model Considered for MS Windowshttps://www.bluemt.com/open-source-model-considered-for-ms-windows/

Open Internet: To Be or Not to Be?https://www.bluemt.com/open-internet-to-be-or-not-to-be/

From the Blue Mountain Data Systems BlogMalware Stays A Step Ahead Infecting One Third of Websiteshttps://www.bluemt.com/malware-stays-a-step-ahead-infecting-one-third-of-websites/

Machine-Generated Data: Potential Goldmine for the CIOhttps://www.bluemt.com/machine-generated-data-potential-goldmine-for-the-cio/

Government Legacy Programs: Reuse vs. Replacementhttps://www.bluemt.com/government-legacy-programs-reuse-vs-replacement/

It Takes a Whole Village to Protect Networks and Systemshttps://www.bluemt.com/it-takes-a-whole-village-to-protect-networks-and-systems/

From the Blue Mountain Data Systems Blog

Governance For the CIOhttps://www.bluemt.com/governance-for-the-cio/

Help Desk Consolidation – Lessons Learnedhttps://www.bluemt.com/help-desk-consolidation-lessons-learned/

One Year Later, Companies Still Vulnerable to Heartbleedhttps://www.bluemt.com/one-year-later-companies-still-vulnerable-to-heartbleed/

Federal Projects Cultivate Worker Passionhttps://www.bluemt.com/federal-projects-cultivate-worker-passion-2/

ABOUT US

Blue Mountain Data Systems Inc.

Blue Mountain Data Systems Inc. is dedicated to application and systems development, electronic document management, IT security support, and the automation of workflow processes.

Read more about our experience here:>> http://bluemt.com/experience

Recent Experience

U.S. Dept. of Labor Employee Benefits Security Administration

1994 to Present

Responsible to the Office of Technology and Information Systems for information systems architecture, planning, applications development, networking, administration and IT security, supporting the enforcement of Title I of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act — ERISA. Within the EBSA, Blue Mountain is responsible for design, development and support for its various enforcement database management systems, as well as all case tracking and customer service inquiry systems. Blue Mountain also provides IT security services to the EBSA, in the form of FISMA Assessment and Authorization, System Security Plans, Risk and vulnerability assessments, monitoring and investigation support.

MANAGEMENT

Paul T. Vesely Founder, President, CEO and Principal Architect

Mr. Vesely is a recognized thought leader in systems architecture and delivery, having designed and delivered many enterprise wide information and document management solutions. Mr. Vesely’s history includes 33 years experience in the information systems industry, with Unisys, Grumman, PRC and a host of clients in both government and private sectors.

CONTACT US

Contact Us Today to Discuss Your Next IT Project

HEADQUARTERS366 Victory DriveHerndon, VA 20170

PHONE 703-502-3416

FAX 703-745-9110

EMAILpaul@bluemt.com

WEBhttps://www.bluemt.com