Telecommunications Archives

Telecommunications

ThingWorx Says IoT Marketplace Will Speed Adoption

November 18, 2013 Paul Roberts

ThingWorx, the ‘platform as a service’ (PaaS) vendor, has made empowering the Internet of Things (or Internet of Everything) its rallying cry. Now the company says it is the first to market with an IoT “marketplace” that it claims will speed development of smart, connected products. The company announced ThingWorx Marketplace at Salesforce.com’s “Dreamforce” event in San Francisco on Monday. The new platform will allow ThingWorx and third party firms to offer “components and services” that are needed to build full-featured IoT applications. Those may be things like new kinds of sensors, widgets, device connectors, protocol adapters, hooks into device clouds or integrations with enterprise management platforms, according to a ThingWorx statement. The platform will be accessible by ThingWorx partners, independent hardware and software vendors, and third party developers, the company said. Enterprises will be able to deploy private instances of the Marketplace to host internally developed applications, application templates, analytics, […]

Zombies Gone, Problems Persist With Emergency Alert System

October 18, 2013 Paul Roberts

More than six months after hacked Emergency Alert System (EAS) hardware allowed a phony warning about a zombie uprising to air in several U.S. states, a security consulting company is warning that serious issues persist in software from Monroe Electronics, whose equipment was compromised in the earlier attack. Software updates issued by Monroe to fix security problems with earlier versions of its software have introduced serious, new issues that could once again allow EAS devices to be compromised by a remote hacker, according to a post by Mike Davis, a researcher at the security firm IOActive on Thursday. Patches issued by Monroe Electronics, the Lyndonville, New York firm that is a leading supplier of EAS hardware, do not adequately address problems raised by Davis and others earlier this year, including the use of “bad and predictable” login credentials. Further inspection by Davis turned up other problems that were either missed […]

Google: Android Infections Are Literally One-In-A-Million

October 11, 2013 Paul Roberts

The emergence of malicious software for Google’s Android operating system has been one of the biggest security stories of the last two years. But Google is arguing that much of that reporting is hype, saying its own data shows hardly any evidence of infections of mobile devices running Android. Speaking at the recent Virus Bulletin Conference in Berlin, Google mobile researcher Adrian Ludwig presented data that suggests the number of true infections from malicious software are vanishingly small – even in the unregulated independent Android marketplaces. But mobile security experts wonder if Google’s data isn’t burying legitimate security concerns about its mobile operating system. The explosion of Android malware has been so well documented as to become almost a truism in the security world. McAfee in August reported a 35 percent growth in Android malware that included “SMS-stealing banking malware, fraudulent dating and entertainment apps, weaponized legitimate apps and malicious […]

At MIT Conference, Warnings of Big Data Fundamentalism

October 9, 2013 Paul Roberts

A senior Microsoft researcher issued a stern warning about the negative consequences of the current mania for data harvesting saying that a kind of “fundamentalism” was emerging regarding the utility of what’s been termed “Big Data” that could easily lead to a Orwellian future of ubiquitous surveillance and diminished freedom. Speaking to an audience of around 300 technology industry luminaries at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s annual Emerging Technology (EMTECH) conference, Kate Crawford, a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research in Boston said that the technology industry’s fetish for “Big Data” had blinded it to the limits of analytics, and the privacy implications of wholesale data harvesting. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT’s) annual Emerging Technologies (EMTECH) conference, a high-gloss event that throws entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and academics together to talk ‘big ideas’ on TED-inspired sets. Crawford’s speech, coming on the heels of a talk about transforming healthcare with big data […]

IDC: 30 Billion Autonomous Devices By 2020

October 7, 2013 Paul Roberts

The official “numbers guys” (and gals) of the technology business over at IDC have just come out with a new report on The Internet of Things and it has some eye-popping numbers. Top among them: an (estimated) 30 billion autonomous “connected things” deployed by the end of this decade. The report, “Worldwide Internet of Things (IoT) 2013-2020 Forecast: Billions of Things, Trillions of Dollars” is a market outlook for the IoT ecosystem, which IDC says comprises “intelligent systems, connectivity services, platforms, analytics, and vertical applications” it also includes professional services and security for IoT infrastructures. While IP-enabled things aren’t exactly “new,” the IoT is being driven by factors that haven’t been common previously, namely: ubiquitous, wireless Internet connectivity, regardless of location, notes IDC analyst Carrie MacGillivray. IDC says the trend lines are pointing up in a serious way, with IoT related economic activity to grow at a 7.9% compound annual […]