The news this week that search giant Google completed its acquisition of smart-home device maker NEST prompting at least one news outlet to proclaim that the “New Internet of Things Wave” has been set in motion. (Umm…new?) But there’s a cautionary note in the business headlines: news that Verizon shuttered its Verizon Home Monitoring service. Matt Hamblen over at Computerworld.com has the news and the confirmation from Verizon, which launched in 2012 and was designed to sink that company’s hooks deeper into wired homes. Verizon provided a common hardware platform for home automation and entertainment systems to plug into and talk to each other. Users could manage devices remotely from their computer, mobile device or from their televisions using FiOS TV. It comprised video surveillance, environmental control and physical security. In commercials, Verizon trumpeted it as the “ultimate 21st century green energy home control.” Verizon charged users $10 a month […]
Search Results for "standards"
Target Breach Spells End for Magnetic Stripe Cards in 2015
After years spent fighting pushes for more secure standards, the payment card industry and retailers are moving quickly to abandon magnetic stripe cards and embrace so-called ‘chip and pin’ technology. Credit card firms MasterCard and Visa plan to have most customers on the more secure chip and pin cards by October, 2015, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The move comes in the wake of a massive heist of account information for tens of millions of credit card holders from the systems of U.S. retailers including Target, Neiman Marcus and Michaels Stores. In an interview with MasterCard’s Carolyn Balfany, the Journal notes that company has set October, 2015 as the date for a “liability shift” – a change in policy that will hold the party in a fraudulent transaction liable for losses due to that transaction. The goal, said Balfany, is to try to encourage merchants and […]
With $8m In Funding, Confer Taps Cloud, Crowd To Secure Endpoints
A new endpoint security startup, Confer, pulled the covers off its technology on Wednesday, announcing a new services-based endpoint protection product that it claims will provide better protection against malicious software and advanced attacks. Based in Waltham, Massachusetts, Confer has been in existence for just over a year and has received $8 million in venture funding from North Bridge Capital and Matrix Partners. The company’s cloud- and endpoint-based software enables organizations to collaborate to stop sophisticated attacks by sharing attack and malware anonymously with other Confer customers. The company said its technology will appeal to enterprise customers who have grown weary of malware infections that manage to bypass or elude traditional anti virus software. Confer is just the latest company to see dollar signs in corporations’ waning enthusiasm for anti malware software. Modern anti malware products are still focused on securing Windows endpoints. They are geared for use in the […]
Wolfram Floats Common Language For Internet Of Things
Amid all the “connected device” hoopla coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week, one of the most interesting announcements came from an unexpected corner: Wolfram Research, a maker of high-end software that is used in scientific research. On Monday, the company’s CEO, Stephen Wolfram, announced The Wolfram Connected Devices Project – an initiative that will comprise both a common catalog of connected devices and a common language to connect them. “Connected devices are central to our long-term strategy of injecting sophisticated computation and knowledge into everything,” Wolfram said. “With the Wolfram Language we now have a way to describe and compute about things in the world. Connected devices are what we need to measure and interface with those things.” Wolfram’s short-term goal is to begin cataloging IoT devices and making those devices ‘searchable’ via its Wolfram Alpha web portal – what the company describes as a ‘computational […]
Cars Become Gadget-ized, Govt. Warns On Privacy Risk
Your car is a lot more than just a car these days. Forget about the in-car entertainment system with the USB port and the iPhone jack. If you drive a late-model vehicle, it has been tricked out with hundreds of wireless sensors to monitor everything from tire pressure to braking and acceleration. These sensors communicate over a VAN – or Vehicle Area Network – that’s not all that different from the LAN that connects the computers, servers, printers and other peripheral devices in your office. Beyond that, automakers are taking their cue from mobile device makers- and for good reason. Apple booked $10 billion in sales through its AppStore in 2013 alone. That’s not too shabby, when you consider that much of that revenue came in $.99 increments! But, as Jessica Naziri (@jessicanaziri) noted in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times, cars are the new gadgets. After all, the Detroit Auto Show is still […]
