AKS Blog

Enterasys Networks is offering a new technology that enables remote network management via consumer and enterprise social media services, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Salesforce.com's Chatter. Administrators can not only receive tweets and messages about port usage and oversubscription from devices on their network, they can tweet commands back to the devices in natural human language rather than via command line interface (CLI). Enterasys' project "isaac" is software that integrates with the company's Network Management System (NMS) and allows network managers to create profiles on consumer and enterprise social media services for their Enterasys network switches, routers and wireless infrastructure. The devices can then send messages through those services to a whitelist of network administrators about any number of preprogrammed events, such as port usage changes, access point oversubscription and device failures. Network managers can also progra...

Software giant Microsoft finally lost its battle over Word patent with Toronto's i4i Inc. <strong>Industry: </strong>Computer Hardware and Software <strong>2007 Sales: </strong> $51 billion Despite years of antitrust battles, the Redmond (Wash.) giant still accounts for almost 9 out of every 10 computer operating systems. Yet analysts took note when Windows&#8217; market share dipped below 90% in December. The Mac OS has been making slow but steady gains, partly due to the unpopularity of Microsoft&#8217;s latest operating system, Vista. Internet Explorer, another blockbuster Microsoft product, commands 70% of the Web browser market, down from 95% in early 2003. Yet industry analysts don&#8217;t think Microsoft (MSFT) has reason to panic, especially with Windows 7 and a new version of IE on the horizon. " border="0" alt="<strong>Location: </strong> Redmond, Wash. <strong>Industry: </strong>Computer Hard...

Six years after it was conceived, the first lot of 10,000 laptops – the HRD ministry calls it low-cost access-cum-computing device — would be delivered to IIT-Rajasthan in late June, and over the next four months 90,000 more would be made available at Rs 2,200 apiece. The announcement was made on Wednesday at the state education ministers' conference. Ministry officials said once the supply of one lakh devices is made, each state would be given 3,000 pieces. The Centre would subsidize 50% of the cost. Effectively, a student would have to pay Rs 1,100 for the gadget. Officials said manufacturing of one lakh laptops has been done in India. As for the cost escalation from the earlier promised price of Rs 1,500, officials said it is due to increase in input cost. "But once more orders are placed, the price would be renegotiated and brought down to Rs 1, 500," an official said. IIT-Rajasthan is the nodal institute for conceiving and monitoring the progress of manufacturing ...

Facebook has rolled out facial recognition technology which moni tors people's photos in the UK, in a move which has made a security expert question the privacy implications of the service.   The social networking site is now searching its servers for photos that look like UK Facebook users, and asking friends of those users to tag the photos, according to Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Cluley.   "Facebook not only gathers information about what you do, but also what you look like," Cluley told ZDNet UK on Tuesday.   Users have found that Facebook had enabled photo recognition outside of the US in the last few days, said Cluley, who criticized the company for enabling photo recognition by default.   "Unfortunately, once again, Facebook has added a new feature to share additional information about its users, and turned it on by default," said Cluley. "Most Facebook users still don't know how to set their privacy options safely, finding the wh...

P ictures, PowerPoint slides, PDFs, even innocuous ads on legitimate sites can carry malware that will install itself on your PC by exploiting flaws in the browser you use. Undetected by anti-virus software, robot software can piggy-back on bank transactions, avoid anti-fraud detections systems, and send money to "mule" accounts operated by criminals in Eastern Europe. That's exactly what happened to 3,000 bank customers when online thieves stole $1 million dollars before they were caught last July by M86, a networking security firm.   Unsuspecting customers visited legitimate-looking websites to download, say, a screen saver. Others received an email with pictures of cute animals or a PowerPoint presentation with a patriotic theme and, responding to heartfelt exhortations to forward it or risk a lifetime of bad luck, they obediently sent it to friends. Read more/Source

It’s almost impossible to understate the importance of having and using strong, secure online passwords. As important as it is for consumers to heed this advice, it can be even more important for businesses to use and secure the passwords of their various accounts. As tools like Firesheep have shown, gaining access to an e-mail or Facebook account can be alarmingly simple. Fortunately, there are tools and precautions companies can take that will help simplify the process of keeping passwords safe and protected. Use unique passwords for different accounts No matter how often we’ve been warned, the reality is that most of us use the same password or group of passwords for all of our major accounts. At first, this doesn’t seem too bad—especially if that password is a unique and long mix of numbers, letters and cases. The problem with using the same password or group of passwords, however, is that if one account is compromised, other accounts can follow. This is especially true for users ...

BOSTON/NEW YORK: Hackers broke into Sony Corp's computer networks and accessed the information of more than 1 million customers to show the vulnerability of the electronic giant's systems, the latest of several security breaches undermining confidence in the company. LulzSec, a group that claims attacks on US PBS television and Fox.com, said it broke into servers that run Sony Pictures Entertainment websites. It published the names, birth dates, addresses, emails, phone numbers and passwords of thousands of people who had entered contests promoted by Sony. "From a single injection, we accessed EVERYTHING," the hacking group said in a statement. "Why do you put such faith in a company that allows itself to become open to these simple attacks?" The security breach is the latest cyber attack against high-profile firms, including defense contractor Lockheed Martin and Google Inc. LulzSec's claims came as Sony executives were trying to reassure US lawmakers a...

Microsoft has earlier previewed Windows 8 build 7867 , today at the Computex 2011, build 7985 was demoed. Windows 8—a name that may not last until the anticipated 2012 launch—made its public debut this week and stunned many pundits who've grown accustomed to Microsoft showing the engine before the interface and not the other way around. My first experience with Internet Explorer 9, for example, was at a developers preview where the company showed only the engine and an interface that lacked virtually all interface accoutrements. Windows 8, by contrast, looked surprisingly polished for a pre-developer's build. As most people know by now, it looks remarkably like Windows Phone 7, complete with tiles, a gesture-driven interface and few boundaries. This is almost exactly what I asked Microsoft to do last year, but they did me one better. Windows 8 is not a blown-up version of the Windows Phone 7 mobile OS. It is Windows proper with a completely new, Windows-phone-influenced in...

The Nielsen Company has released the details from its latest mobile survey, which reveals that Android not only leads in U.S. marketshare, it also dominates when it comes to data usage. The survey, which was carried out in April 2011, indicates that Android now makes up 36% of the smartphone market. That’s a whopping 10% lead over Apple and a 13% lead over RIM. Android has been leading the U.S. mobile marketshare for several months now, its lead widening since Nielsen first reported Android’s dominance in March 2011. It’s notable that Android has not only sustained, but increased its lead in the smartphone market. However, the more interesting part of Nielsen’s report concerns how users are actually using their smartphones. Nielsen broke down data usage into various categories, including app downloads, video/mobile TV, streaming music/radio, full track music downloads and online games. Click for more/Source