Technique pioneered by the Israelis, technological solution yet for bureaucracy and self-interest

10-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks, we're confronted with a sobering "report card" from the heads of the origina l September 11 Commission. In spite of a doubling of the intelligence budget since 2001 to $80 billion, the creation or reorganizing of some 263 government organizations, and the formation of the $50 billion Department of Homeland Security, the government has largely fallen short, the new report notes. The report states that while some progress has been made, "some major September 11 Commission recommendations remain unfulfilled, leaving the U.S. not as safe as we could or should be." Technology has, in some ways, been a particular disappointment with regard to security, in that no real breakthrough technologies spurred by massive government R&D investments have emerged. "We've mostly seen the deployment of off-the-shelf equipment," says James Jay Carafano, director of the Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation. "Improved intelligence and counterterrorism investigation have been more important than new technologies."

Airport Security
The ability to detect explosives and weapons at airports is one area the report singles out as having moved too slowly. It points out that the technology still "lacks reliability and lags in its capability to automatically identify concealed weapons and explosives." The situation has been mitigated to some extent by the deployment of about 500 full-body scanners at some 78 airports in the U.S., with another 275 slated to come online within a year. But new standards for the sensitivity of these and other explosive-detection devices set in 2010 still haven't been met, and many airport systems still operate at decade-old performance levels. What's more, the new scanners created a sharp privacy debate over the way they reveal body parts, while the so-called "puffer machines"—used to sense traces of explosive chemicals—proved embarrassingly ineffective because they were easily gummed up by contaminants in the environment. Those sorts of controversies and failures, notes Rob Strayer, director of the National Security Preparedness Group at the Bipartisan Policy Center, could make it harder to fund and deploy a new generation of systems. What's more, says Strayer, the situation was easily avoidable, emerging out of the defense community's failure to recognize that, unlike technology provided to the armed forces, technology that directly impacts the public shouldn't be rolled out until it's been proven to be effective and tolerable. "The Department of Homeland Security is too quick to deploy devices that haven't been fully field-tested," he says. "They're under a lot of pressure to solve these problems quickly."

Data Mining
Results seem to be better in the area of "data mining," or sifting through vast databases of information to pull out insights about who might be planning an attack. "There's been a lot of progress over the past 10 years in mining large volumes of social media and other data," says Rohini Srihari, a computer science researcher at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and founder of database-mining-technology firm Janya, which has been involved in defense work. There are now supercomputers crunching away at data posted to Facebook, Twitter, and countless websites and blogs, in multiple languages, all to find links between people, places, and events that could represent security threats. Challenges still remain in content analysis, notes Srihari—that is, in understanding context, metaphors, local jargon, and other complexities of language that can trip up a computer. But headway is being made here, as it is in understanding the emotional content of language. Such an understanding can allow analysts to zero in on posts from people who may be expressing intense anger while discussing sensitive potential targets such as airports or other crowded public places. The biggest challenge to data mining may be finding the data that isn't publicly posted. "The sort of people who carry out a September 11 attack aren't posting about it on Twitter," says Srihari. What's more, notes security researcher Richard Bloom at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, false positive and false negative results in anti-terror data mining can be highly damaging. "Even if we're missing less than a percent, we're letting bad guys get away," he says. "And falsely tagging people as bad guys has huge implications for society."

Smarter Video Surveillance
Another hope for technology is that of hooking up video cameras to computers capable of recognizing suspicious behavior in airports and elsewhere. But such systems, while under development, are still far too inaccurate to add much security, notes Bloom. He adds that the technology still has to take a back seat to the far more costly, but far more effective, technique pioneered by the Israelis, and now being adopted at U.S. airports, of briefly but rigorously questioning passengers with a skilled eye to detecting behavioral anomalies that merit more intense scrutiny. "It's not as simple as spotting people who seem stressed out," says Bloom. "Most people who are stressed out aren't terrorists." Our borders remain far too porous as well, notes the report. Networks of sensors deployed at borders and coastlines have so far fallen short of hopes for them, says Carafano. "We're still working on getting sensors that are sensitive enough and on techniques for interpreting the data from them," he notes. We remain stuck with a particular vulnerability to bioweapons, he adds, where technology has done much more to add to the threat than help us guard against it. "Every time we come up with a way to deliver a medicine more effectively, we're creating the potential for engineering more deadly bioweapons," he says. "We really need more cutting-edge biotech countermeasures." At least we can't blame technology for the continued failure—noted in the report—to link up the communications networks used by different public-safety agencies in different localities. That's strictly a planning problem, says Strayer. "It's just a matter of getting agreements between senior public safety officials," he says. "Until now, they've been putting in systems that tend to meet their own needs, instead of worrying about how to integrate them with everyone else's." There's no technological solution yet for bureaucracy and self-interest.

Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Google Inc's Android software with its own security software to keep corporate data

Dell Inc United States Of America lost the title of world's top personal-computer maker to its longtime rival, Hewlett-Packard Co. So when Hewlett-Packard surprised the world by announcing it would consider divesting its $41 billion PC business, Dell's founder and chief executive officer, Michael S. Dell, quickly took to Twitter. "Goodbye HP," he wrote. "Sorry you don't want to be in PCs anymore." He expanded on his message in a late August interview. "We like the PC business, and we're staying in it," said Dell, 46. Whether No. 1 or No. 2, it's a dubious distinction to be one of the biggest suppliers of machines now considered products of a bygone era, as the computing world moves on to tablets and mobile devices. Still, Dell sees the business he once dominated as a springboard to greater things, Bloomberg Business week reports in its Sep 12 issue. Through a string of 10 acquisitions in less than two years, Dell has branched into areas such as information-technology services, computer networking and data storage. He thinks the kind of low-cost, low-margin hardware Dell is known for -- the company sold about $39 billion worth of desktops, laptops, and related products last year -- can open the way for sales of higher-margin enterprise products.

Pruning the business : At the same time, and in a nod to reality, Dell is winnowing its troubled line of consumer products and focusing its attention on the small and medium-size businesses and government agencies that already account for more than half its sales. "Some of this we kind of did to ourselves," Dell said in an interview in Round Rock, Texas, where the company is based. "We are consciously pruning the business," he said. "We're replacing a lot of low-margin revenue with a lot of high-margin revenue." Dell is under pressure to make the shift. The company is expected to make less in profits this fiscal year than it did in fiscal 2006. Analysts on average predict the company will have $3.7 billion in profit for the year ending in January, according to Bloomberg data. The company's shares have lost 41 per cent since Jan. 30, 2007 -- the day before Michael Dell ousted former CEO Kevin Rollins and returned to the helm, which is in part a reflection of Wall Street's skepticism about his strategy. "It's hard to say he's come in and saved the company like Steve Jobs at this point," said Jayson Noland, an analyst at investment bank Robert W. Baird.

Aiming at middle : The consumer market has been vicious to everyone but Apple Inc. (AAPL), and Dell whiffed a few times too many: Its Adamo computer, a $2,000 high-design laptop that launched with a splashy ad campaign two years ago, failed to find many buyers, and last month the company killed off its oddly shaped 5-inch tablet, the Streak. PC sales are also stalling. Gartner Inc now predicts global shipments will increase 3.8 per cent this year to 364 million machines, down from the market researcher's previous forecast for 9.3 per cent growth. On the other end of the scale, enterprise giants such as International Business Machines Corp, Cisco Systems Inc, Oracle Corp, and Hewlett-Packard already hold sway over data center sales to big businesses. By focusing his company's efforts on cost-conscious IT officers at organizations with 100 to 5,000 workers, Dell is betting it can stay out of its larger rivals' cross hairs while avoiding the expense and risk of keeping up with consumers' whims.

Buying direct
David Johnson, the head of mergers and acquisitions at Dell, said recent purchases such as Compellent Technologies Inc and Force10 Networks Inc will let Dell offer its existing PC customers technology to move, store and analyze their data. It'll be less complicated for them to buy directly from Dell, he says, than from resellers used by IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Cisco. The direct approach means "we'll attain more margin, but the value the customer gets will also be greater," Johnson said. In smartphones and tablets, the company plans to augment Microsoft Corp's Windows and Google Inc's Android software with its own security software to keep corporate data walled off from users' personal applications, a move to woo cautious IT officers.





Cloud computing
Yet even after those acquisitions, Dell is either way behind or absent in many of the high-margin enterprise technologies now in demand, including data-analysis software and cloud computing. In the first week of September, IBM acquired two data-analysis software companies in as many days, and Hewlett-Packard agreed to buy enterprise-search company Autonomy Corp for $10.3 billion on August 18. Cloud computing services from Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft and other companies are replacing traditional server sales, instead letting users tap computing power over the Internet. And then there's Dell's reputation. "A lot of enterprise wants a fairly sophisticated vendor, and Dell's not that," said Noland. "They're the low-cost vendor." Shedding Dell's image as the cheapest box builder is an ongoing effort, Johnson says. "It takes time to change the perception of a company," he said. Michael Dell, for one, isn't concerned about the wait. Said Dell: "I think 46 is still pretty young."

Source: The Times of India

India's IT-BPO export revenues come from the US and European markets alone

For a sector that eagerly tunes in to every signal emanating from the US market, the Indian outsourcing industry is reading President, Mr Barack Obama's $447-billion package to galvanise the American economy, quite “positively.” At the same time, the Indian tech industry appears somewhat relieved that Mr Obama's 40-minute address to the joint session of Congress did not include any of the usual political rhetoric around US jobs being taken away by offshoring. “We are pleasantly surprised that he is not referring to it any more. He (the US President) referred to all the right issues around creation of jobs, rather than offshoring, which has caused very little or no unemployment in the US,” Mr Pramod Bhasin, Vice-Chairman (non-executive) of Genpact, said. The crux of Mr Obama's “American Jobs Act” involves payroll and investment spending tax cuts, creation of new jobs for construction workers, teachers and veterans, and proposes tax credits to companies that hire new workers and tax relief for small business owners.


 








It also seeks to extend unemployment insurance for another year. Software association Nasscom's President, Mr Som Mittal, says that US needed some support of this nature to encourage companies to create jobs. “This is the first time that some positive steps that talk of job creation are being taken. Mr Obama has talked of re-skilling. Indian companies operating in the US have been re-skilling veterans and providing them jobs. We all want the US to be back on its growth trajectory,” said Mr Mittal. It may be noted that the fortunes of Indian tech industry are closely entwined with the health of the Western economies, as 80 per cent of India's IT-BPO export revenues come from the US and European markets alone.


 





MindTree CFO, Mr Rostow Ravanan, said that measures to stimulate US employment and its economy will have a huge positive effect on the industry. However, according to him, much more needs to be done, and faster, to revive the health of the US economy. The US, he feels, has identified the “illness and the medicine” but is not “administering strong enough doses.”




 


 “In the next three to five years, the biggest boost the Indian industry can get is from the pick-up and growth of the US economy… If employment comes back, spending and the overall economy get a thrust, it means that businesses can also spend more,” he says. The Indian industry is also seeking to draw a distinction between the prevailing unemployment in sectors such as manufacturing, retail and construction, and the hiring drive by Indian IT companies in the US market. “Many Indian IT companies are increasing their presence in the US, and, as such, unemployment in the IT industry in the US is fairly low.




 






So, offshoring in IT is not a threat,” says Mr Ravanan. This view also resonates with Nasscom's Mr Mittal, who argues that job losses in the US have largely been in sectors such as construction, manufacturing and retail. “In our space, no job has been lost and, if at all, it was because people did not have the right skills…Indian companies have been hiring and it is good that it should get accelerated,” he adds. Last evening, Genpact announced its plans to increase investment of dollars and man hours in training and talent development in the US. The company said it had doubled its US workforce in the past 18 months and “expects to continue to increase its US workforce through aggressive recruiting initiatives for business development, operations, analytics and reengineering positions.”



 




Source: The Hindu Business Line

Computer maker IBM is developing "skyscraper" computers - develop material

Get ready for the next-generation computers and smartphones that are up to 1,000 times faster than the systems you use today. Computer maker IBM is developing "skyscraper" computers using huge sandwiches of silicon chips by sticking layer after layer of chips covered with tiny components together. The process, for which IBM has roped in glue maker 3M, will make PCs and smartphones up to 1,000 times faster than the existing ones and are expected to be available in market as early as 2013. 3M currently makes heat resistant glues, adhesives used in the aerospace industry and sticky tapes, but the hi-tech glues created for IBM could actually be the key step towards making the next evolutionary leap in computing, the Daily Mail reported. The attempts at piling chips vertically known as 3D packaging has so far been suffering from overheating. But, the new glues could potentially conduct heat through a stack of densely-packed chips and away from logic circuits that could be burnt out by the heat. The research aims to create "stacks" of up to 100 layers of silicon, the report said. Mike Bowman, marketing manager for 3M, said: "This material fits underneath computer chips when they're attached to printed circuit boards the unique part of what we're doing is that our glue conducts heat out to the edge of the sandwich.

"Our glue will spread heat more evenly through the chip. With conventional chips, with just one or two layers, but once you're stacking chips, the problem can become very severe." According to the researchers, a ball of advanced adhesive is placed between layers of chips, allowing up to 100 chips to be stacked without overheating. "Today's chips including those containing 3D transistors are in fact 2D chips that are still very flat structures," Bernie Meyerson, a vice president of IBM Research, said in a statement. So far, most increases in computing power have been driven by scientific breakthroughs that allow chip makers to etch ever-smaller circuits onto ever-smaller chip wafers. The new '3D' approach could accelerate gadgets such as tablet computers to unheard-of new speeds. "Our scientists are aiming to develop materials that will allow us to package tremendous amounts of computing power into a new form factor a silicon skyscraper," said Meyerson. "We believe we can advance this, and create a new class of semiconductors faster, with lower power usage, ideal for tablets and smartphones." Other 3M glues are used in hi-tech industries such as solar power, as well as in markedly lower-tech environments such as carpentry. Both companies did not speculate on a release date for the new technology, but insiders said such versions could be on the market as early as 2013.

Source: The Financial Express

NHN Japan has taken cloud gaming to a new level

Ubitus Inc., the leading cloud computing company, has announced the launch of world's first commercial mobile cloud gaming service, G CLOUD, with NHN Japan Corporation. Ubitus' GameCloud technology is preloaded into NTT DOCOMO, INC.'s LTE Android tablets, which are planned to be launched nationwide in Japan in October 2011 or shortly after. This alliance will bring in series of joint promotion campaigns starting September. As the flagship application of LTE service "Xi™", G CLOUD will be pre-installed on two new tablet devices from DOCOMO, Samsung GALAXY Tab 10.1 LTE SC-01D and Fujitsu ARROWS Tab F-01D. Users can instantly experience various popular high-quality game titles, including online MMORPG and 3D action games from major providers, through a freemium model or a purchase of "Play Ticket". Additional titles will be continuously released in the coming months. "The synergy among Ubitus, DOCOMO, and NHN Japan has taken cloud gaming to a new level, also introduced an innovative business model for the gaming and telecommunication industries," said Wesley Kuo, the CEO of Ubitus. Ubitus GameCloud Technology specializes in rendering games that require graphics computing on the server cloud and processes gaming media into streaming video. Its patent pending streaming technologies allow mobile devices with a thin client to interactively control games remotely through a dynamically-rendered interface. Users can enjoy variety of games on their mobile devices and extend their gaming experiences whenever and wherever.

Source: IT VAR News

China is home to the world's largest number of registered netizens

Most people believe that Internet is China's most significant source of rumours, a survey has shown. The online survey was conducted by the China Youth Daily newspaper. Nearly 86 percent of the 1,714 netizens regard the Internet as the most common channel through which unchecked rumours are spread, followed by word-of-mouth and mobile phone text messages, Xinhua cited the newspaper as reporting. The popularity of microblogs and other online communication mediums has resulted in the proliferation of falsehoods, due to the fact that netizens are allowed to speak anonymously, said Hu Yong, an associate professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Peking University. This anonymity makes it difficult to trace the sources of rumours and verify their authenticity, Hu said. Sina Weibo, the country's most popular microblogging service, asked its millions of users to help stop the spread of unchecked rumours in August. The company vowed that microbloggers will have their accounts suspended for one month if they are found to be posting messages containing false information. Liu Qi, a senior official, had encouraged Internet companies in August to stop the spread of "false and harmful information" and to "ensure the authenticity of information and create a healthy online media atmosphere". With 485 million users, China is home to the world's largest number of registered netizens. The rising popularity of microblogging services has allowed this segment of the country's population to voice their opinions and beliefs in a way that has never been seen before in China. The number of Chinese microbloggers reached 195 million by the end of June, a stunning increase of 208.9 percent over the number recorded around the end of 2010, according to statistics from the China Internet Network Information Center.

Source: The Economic Times

Proactively develop guidelines and assess your data protection and security needs

Symantec announced the findings of its 2011 Small Business Virtualisation Poll which examined the adoption of virtualisation within small businesses and its impact on their organisations. According to the survey, small businesses have a strong interest in virtualisation, but are still learning how to adopt it in their organisations. As they implement server virtualisation, small businesses are putting their data at risk. The survey found that most small businesses aren't taking the most basic steps to secure and protect their virtual environments. The survey is based on 658 respondents in 28 countries worldwide, of which 306 were from the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region. "Virtualisation presents an opportunity for small businesses with seventy-two percent in the APJ region considering server virtualization," said Ajay Goel, managing director, India & SAARC, Symantec. "The majority of respondents cited cost efficiencies and disaster-recovery readiness as benefits they're hoping to gain, with most still early in the adoption cycle. We also found that many small businesses are neglecting to protect their virtual environments, largely due to budget and staffing constraints."

Survey Highlights

Financial Benefits Driving Decision to Virtualise. Seventy-two percent of respondents from APJ said their organisations are considering virtualisation. Not surprisingly, financial benefits rank highest among reasons to adopt server virtualisation. Reduced capital expense was cited by 68 percent, while 67 percent respectively said reduced operating expense and the ability to improve disaster-recovery readiness would drive their decisions to deploy virtualisation. Other benefits include the ability to use fewer servers for the same number of applications (65 percent) and improved server scalability (65 percent). Limited IT Skills Holding Some Small Businesses Back. Despite their interest, small businesses are finding it difficult to move from discussions to execution. Only eight percent of APJ-based respondents have deployed virtualised servers and they are focusing their early-stage efforts on simpler, less critical application areas. Top challenges include performance (64 percent), backup (61 percent) and workload capacity and planning issues (58 percent). Nearly a third of small businesses not now planning virtualisation cited lack of experience as a factor. Data on Virtualised Servers Lacking Basic Security Protection. As small businesses move to virtual environments, they do not protect and secure their data. Only 13 percent always back up their virtualised servers and 24 percent backup infrequently or not at all. They are not doing any better in securing their data - only 40 percent are completely secured. Respondents say budget and staffing issues are preventing them from taking these essential actions. Even those who said they are somewhat or completely secure are, in fact, less secure than they think. A staggering 76 percent forego endpoint protection, 73 percent do not have antivirus on their virtual servers, and 51 percent don't have a firewall.

Recommendations

Fortunately there are some simple things small businesses can do to make sure they are properly protecting their data and systems: Define a virtualisation strategy: Work with an IT consultant to develop a strategy. Proactively develop guidelines and assess your data protection and security needs. Determine if moving to these cloud services are right for you. Once you have a strategy, develop a plan and stick to it. Secure your virtual environments: Consider what security solutions you need to secure your virtual environment, including a firewall, antivirus, and endpoint security. Make sure you have established security practices as an additional layer of protection. Protect your data: Have a simplified approach to backup. Implement a solution that protects both physical and virtual environments. Consider a data deduplication solution to save space and time.

Source: The Economic Times

Alibaba Cloud Computing to release English mobile OS

Alibaba Cloud Computing, a unit of Alibaba Group, will release an English version of its mobile operating system via upgrade this month, a top company executive said on Friday. Wang Jian, Alibaba Group's chief architect and president of Alibaba Cloud Computing, was speaking to reporters. Alibaba launched in late July its first self-developed mobile operating system and smartphone in a bid to capture a slice of China's rapidly growing mobile Internet market. Earlier this week, Dell Inc confirmed that it was working with Baidu Inc to develop smartphones and tablets for the Chinese market.

Source: The Economic Times

India expect websites to load as quickly - mobile and application performance, according to a survey

A significant portion of India’s mobile consumers’ expectations are not being met as the result of poor mobile and application performance, according to a survey by Compuware Corporation. The survey titled 'What Users in India Want from Mobile' also said that mobile users expect quick, anytime transactions that work flawlessly every time, but as the survey findings illustrate, that’s not what they’re experiencing. “User expectations for mobile continue to increase, but companies in India are not meeting mobile users’ need for fast and reliable experiences. As a result, many companies are failing to take advantage of the opportunities being provided by increased mobile access,” said Neeraj Dotel, managing director, Compuware India. Today’s mobile users in India demand exceptional web experiences and highly satisfying, convenient, on-the-go mobile site speeds regardless of their mode of access. To understand consumers’ mobile web and application expectations and experiences, Compuware commissioned an independent survey which queried 4,014 global users, including 500 users in India. The study also finds that global mobile users’ expectations are not being met, as a majority of users experienced slow or unreliable mobile and application performance.

Key survey findings include:
Mobile users’ expectations for mobile websites are high with 84 per cent of mobile web users in India expect websites to load as quickly, almost as quickly or faster on their mobile phone compared to the computer they use at home. However, 39 per cent said websites load more slowly on their phone. As much as 58 per cent of web users say they expect a website to load on their mobile phone in 3 seconds or less and 81 per cent are willing to wait 5 seconds or less for a single web page to load before leaving the site. Close to 50 per cent are only willing to wait 5 seconds or less for an application to load before exiting. Fifty eight per cent of web users in India had a problem accessing a website in the past year and 52 per cent had a problem accessing an app on their phone. More than 93 per cent of mobile web users would access websites more often from their phone if the experience was as fast and reliable. Mobile users do not have much patience for retrying a website or application that is not functioning initially - 39 per cent will go to a competitor’s site instead. The majority of mobile web users are only willing to retry a website (68 per cent) or application (77 per cent) two times or less if it does not work initially. A bad experience on a mobile website leaves web users much less likely to return to, or recommend, a particular website. Nearly half of the web users (48 per cent) are unlikely to return to a website that they had trouble accessing from their phone and 57 per cent are unlikely to recommend the site.

Source: CIOL Bureau