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Cloud computing is all the rage. "It's become the phrase du jour," says Gartner senior analyst Ben Pring, echoing many of his peers. The problem is that (as with Web 2.0) everyone seems to have a different definition. As a metaphor for the Internet, "the cloud" is a familiar cliché, but when combined with "computing," the meaning gets bigger and fuzzier. Some analysts and vendors define cloud computing narrowly as an updated version of utility computing: basically virtual servers available over the Internet. Others go very broad, arguing anything you consume outside the firewall is "in the cloud," including conventional outsourcing. Cloud computing is all the rage. "It's become the phrase du jour," says Gartner senior analyst Ben Pring, echoing many of his peers. The problem is that (as with Web 2.0) everyone seems to have a different definition. As a metaphor for the Internet, "the cloud" is a ...

For startups, user growth, product growth, virality, marketing usually goes on the top of their priority list. As part of product planning cycles, embedding information security into their product/service is the last concern for most startups. Which is deeply ignored here? Information and data security. Often you see devops engineers, systems engineers, infrastructure engineers or system administrators wear the security hat in these startups and performs some of the small security fixes or patches. Even though they can perform research on the procedures to apply patches, harden databases, or implement remediation as a result of the industry breaches, they might not take every decision or option from security perspective. Consider the Code Spaces startup breach that basically caused them to go out of business due to improper hardening of the root passwords and not following the AWS security best practices. This deeply ignored lack of security awareness has actually...

The event in San Francisco was aimed mostly at enterprise customers, and Microsoft promised an OS that will be more intuitive for the millions of workers still on Windows 7 and older OSes. Here's a rundown of some of the key points we learned Tuesday about Windows 10. The natural name would have been Windows 9, but Microsoft is eager to suggest a break with the past. "We're not building an incremental product," said Terry Myerson, head of Microsoft's Operating Systems Group. Microsoft considered the name "Windows One," he said, to match products like OneNote and OneDrive and its "One Microsoft" business strategy. But he noted the name was snagged a long time ago, by a young Bill Gates. Perhaps Microsoft didn't like the idea of being numerically one step behind Apple's OS X. (A reporter asked jokingly if subsequent versions will be named after big cats.) Whatever the reason, Windows 10 it will be. "When yo...

McAfee, part of Intel Security, has announced the latest version of McAfee Mobile Security that now enables consumers to instantly run free privacy and security scans. These scans allow users to identify apps that are over sharing personal information. It also scans for and removes malware and looks for other security threats. McAfee makes it simple for users to perform these scans as soon as the product is installed. McAfee Mobile Security also allows users to easily remove apps that pose significant risks. According to McAfee’s Consumer Mobile Security Report, 80% of mobile apps today collect location information about users, 82% know the device ID, and 57% track when people use their phones. Additionally, the apps that aggressively and often unnecessarily collect data leverage potentially dangerous ad libraries, and 35% of these apps contain malware. “The personal data some apps collect can be beneficial to enhancing your mobile experience, however many apps ...

There’s nothing you can do if hackers get into a database with your password in it, but you can still protect yourself for all the other worst-case scenarios involving hacking. In this video, we go over ways to make your passwords harder to crack. First, don’t make it easy on hackers by choosing a common password. Splashdata uses security breaches to gather 'most popular passwords' lists each year. The word 'password', number sequences, and other simplistic phrases or numbers fill the top spots. Also, don’t use your name, a password related to another one you might have on a different site, or a login name. Instead, experts recommend using 15 characters, upper-case letters, better yet nonsensical words with special characters and numbers inside them.

If you have a hard drive that is quickly approaching capacity, sorting through the files and folders for the ones taking up the most space can be a really time-consuming process. There’s an easier way to do it—it’s the subject of our latest Tech Tip. For help identifying space hogs, let’s turn to TreeSize Free, which is available for Windows 8, as well as Windows 7, Vista, and XP. Launch the program, go to scan, and select the drive you want to take a look at. The application shows you, in gigabytes, megabytes, and kilobytes, how big each folder is, ranked from most to least. One of the nice things you can do with TreeSize Free is drill down into subfolders to see what sort of space is being taken up. If I want to right click on a folder and see what the files are like or delete them, I can go ahead and do that. Note that TreeSize Free does not dynamically update, so after you delete the data you’ll have to run the scan again to get an accurate count of file...

Today in international tech news: Adding yet another chapter to the U.S.-China cyberstandoff, China calls for increased vetting of major IT products and services. Also: Cabbies vandalize -- and engage in fisticuffs at -- the London office of a taxi app; a German court tries to legislate against revenge porn; and Twitter heeds Pakistani block requests. The ever-testy cyberstandoff between the U.S. and China got a new twist when Beijing announced that it would start "cybersecurity vetting of major IT products and services" used for national security and public interests, according to the Xinhua news agency. The vetting is designed to prevent suppliers from using their products to control, disrupt or shut down clients' systems, or from using the systems to scoop up information. Companies that don't pass muster will be barred from supplying products and services in China. The Xinhua article references both a) Congress' 2012 declaration that...

The most obvious reasoning for Microsoft's establishment of a .Net foundation and further opening up the technology is the continued presence and prominence of open source software -- and openness in general -- in key, fast-moving enterprise IT trends including cloud computing, Big Data and devops. Today, Microsoft continues to reshape its approach to open source. Microsoft recently established a .Net foundation and open sourced substantial parts of the popular programming language, continuing to spread its newfound love for open source software. However, it's another movement -- devops -- that may be more of a driving factor in Microsoft's .Net move. In establishing the independent .Net Foundation and making more key pieces of .Net open source, Microsoft was promoting collaboration and community, it said. Many open source technologies exist for .Net, including the recently released .Net compiler platform codenamed "Roslyn." Microsoft also high...

Black and gray markets for computer hacking tools, services and byproducts such as stolen credit card numbers continue to expand, creating an increasing threat to businesses, governments and individuals, according to a new RAND Corporation study. One dramatic example is the December 2013 breach of retail giant Target, in which data from approximately 40 million credit cards and 70 million user accounts was hijacked. Within days, that data appeared — available for purchase — on black market websites. “Hacking used to be an activity that was mainly carried out by individuals working alone, but over the last 15 years the world of hacking has become more organized and reliable,” said Lillian Ablon, lead author of the study and an information systems analyst at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “In certain respects, cybercrime can be more lucrative and easier to carry out than the illegal drug trade.” The growth in cybercrime has been assisted by sophisticated and specia...

New Facebook tool finds your friends (CNN) -- Your phone always knows where you are. And now, if you want, your Facebook friends will always know where you are, too. Facebook is introducing a mobile feature called Nearby Friends that taps into that steady stream of location information so friends can track each other in real time. The idea is to make it easy for people to meet up in real life, so they can have conversations in person instead of comment threads, temporarily replacing Likes and LOLs with eye contact and actual laughter. A live meet-up is also an excellent opportunity to grab a selfie with your pal and upload it to the Facebook owned Instagram. In a refreshing change, the new Nearby Friends feature is not turned on by default. Friends will not be able to see where you are unless you decide live-tracking is something you want in your life and visit Facebook's settings to turn it on. Making a potentially invasive new feature opt-in suggests...

  Key Difference:  LCDs (Liquid Crystal Display) are displays that use liquid crystals sandwiched between two sheets of polarizing material. The images are displayed when electrical charge is applied to the crystals. CRTs (Cathode Ray Tube) are vacuum tubes that use electron guns and fluorescent screens to display images. CRTs and LCDs vary greatly and LCDs are replacing CRTs in today’s world. LCDs are lighter, slimmer and consume less power compared to CRTs. However, CRTs have a sharper image quality compared to LCDs. LCDs (Liquid Crystal Display) are displays that use liquid crystals sandwiched between two sheets of polarizing material. The images are displayed when electrical charge is applied to the crystals. An LCD uses a select type of liquid crystal known as twisted nematics (TN), which are twisted in shape. Applying a current to these crystals causes them to unwind to a certain degree depending on the voltage. A LCD is in a layer formation, it starts ...