Friday, March 29, 2013

Mainframe Masters: Students Bring New Blood to Venerable IBM Units


We used to joke about all the old IBM programmers retiring, and the world coming to a screaching halt. This was also a fear surrounding Y2K. Who was going to change all the two-digit date fields to four to accomodate the new millennium? It was time to reprint all the IBM programming books and make a killing. Well, obviously there was no Y2K disaster and we didn't make a killing on mainframe books.

So now the Journal News, my local newspaper (yes, I still read physical newspapers), reports that IBM has a mainframe contest. Yes, big iron still rules, and MIPS is still a "meaningless indicator of processor speed."

I should run a contest to see who can expand acronmys like CICS, REXX, VSE, MVS TSO, DASD, RACF. Anyone care to try?

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Friday, March 22, 2013

Narrowcasting: Making the world a smaller, and dumber place

I’m noticing that the new Yahoo is starting to present news items and stories based on past clicks. This totally kills the serendipitous discovery of interesting stories. The last thing I need to see are articles that don’t broaden and add depth to what I know, or think I know.

Regardless of their algorithmic cleverness, I doubt Yahoo, Google, Amazon and their ilk know me well enough. When's the last time you acted on one of their recommendations?

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

NATO cyberwar manual: Civilian hackers can be targets

Salon reports that the handbook is first attempt to codify how international law applies to state-sponsored online attacks.

Use kinetic force against cyber aggressors? Yes! Make the cost of playing too dear.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Cyber attacks and cyber espionage have surpassed terrorism as the top security threat

According to a Reuters report, intelligence officials said for the first time on Tuesday that cyber attacks and cyber espionage have surpassed terrorism as the top security threat facing the United States.

... until the next terrorist attack.

A DDoS attack on Chase yesterday prevented access to the website, including by me. So far, the Chinese have not been blamed.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Leaky Apps and Cloud Data Insecurities Are the New Corporate Norm

London, March 5, 2013 – Commenting on a  New York Times story about the governance issues that portable devices and their leaky apps create for companies, Varonis Systems  says that mobile access to cloud-based data - and replication to the device itself - has become the new corporate norm. “Organisations are losing track of where their critical data is stored, so controlling, monitoring and auditing that data is becoming more and more difficult. IT must be able to offer the functionality that its end users need to collaborate, but without losing control”, says David Gibson, VP of Strategy with the data governance specialist.

"I've actually lost count of the number of times this New York Times business editorial references leading edge IT concepts such as apps and cloud services, but the reality is that - as witnessed by the business pages this article appears - this really is the new norm. This creates a raft of security headaches in the shape of unsecured devices, as well as the aforementioned leak apps and cloud services. And it's against this backdrop that critical data needs to be identified, managed and protected with an effective data governance platform - without hindering employees’ work," he says.

"I think it's very revealing that the NYT feature notes that, even without proof of compromised accounts, data losses can prove costly in terms of money and reputation - especially given that the US Securities and Exchange Commission mandates that data leaks caused by unsecured devices, leaky apps or poor cloud security, must be announced publicly if the information potentially affects a company’s share price," he added.