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Equinix Opens Washington DC Data Center Plans Singapore Expansion
Jul 29, 2010
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Jul 29, 2010 -- Data center operator Equinix announced on Thursday it has opened its sixth International Business Exchange data center in the Washington DC metropolitan area.
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Swedish Pirate Party Offers Web Hosting for WikiLeaks
Jul 29, 2010 Hosting News Leave a comment
July 29, 2010 -- The controversial WikiLeaks organization has faced opposition from government officials since releasing close to 100 thousand military documents Sunday, which provided the basis for allegations that Pakistan has been aiding Afghan insurgents.
CA Technologies Names President of Asia Pacific
Jul 29, 2010 Hosting News Leave a comment
July 29, 2010 -- IT management software and solutions provider CA Technologies announced on Thursday it has named Lionel Lim the company's president of Asia Pacific, effective August 30.
Microsoft, Adobe Collaborate Against Online Threats
Jul 29, 2010 Microsoft, adobe, news, online threats Leave a comment
(The Hosting News) – Today at the Black Hat USA 2010 conference, Microsoft Corp. announced that it will extend its Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP) to include vulnerability information sharing from Adobe Systems Inc. Microsoft also discussed the new policy of coordinated vulnerability disclosure — a reframing of responsible disclosure — and introduced new tools and guidance that will improve online security for customers.
Extending Microsoft Active Protections Program in Collaboration With Adobe Systems
Launched in October 2008 by the Microsoft Security Response Center, MAPP is a unique collaborative effort that facilitates advanced information sharing on Microsoft product vulnerabilities with security software providers. In fall 2010, Adobe will join Microsoft and share its vulnerability information with the 65 global MAPP members, offering advanced protections to hundreds of millions of people. Through programs like MAPP, Microsoft is helping protect customers from the threats of today and tomorrow.
“Adobe products are relied on by individuals and organizations worldwide. Given the relative ubiquity and cross-platform reach of many of our products, as well as the continued shifts in the threat landscape, Adobe has attracted increasing attention from attackers,” said Brad Arkin, senior director of product security and privacy at Adobe. “We are committed to our customers’ security at every level and are excited to leverage MAPP as an important part of our overall product security initiative. MAPP is a great example of a tried and proven model giving an upper hand to a network of global defenders who all rally behind a shared purpose — protecting our mutual customers.”
“Microsoft acknowledges that the constantly changing threat landscape requires a new approach to security — collaboration and shared responsibility are key as past individual efforts are no longer enough,” said Mike Reavey, director of the Microsoft Security Response Center at Microsoft. “We’re excited about extending the benefits of MAPP to Adobe users as we’ve seen clear evidence of its impact in advancing customer protections. We continue to encourage the collective industry — from security researchers and vendors to customers— to recognize the responsibility we all share in fortifying the broader computing ecosystem against online crime.”
Shift to Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure
In recognition of the endless debate between responsible disclosure and full disclosure proponents and the debate’s ability to detract from productive industry collaboration and customer defense, Microsoft announced it will move to a new practice and philosophy of coordinated vulnerability disclosure.
Definition of coordinated vulnerability disclosure. Microsoft believes coordinated vulnerability disclosure is when newly discovered vulnerabilities in hardware, software and services are disclosed directly to the vendors of the affected product, to a CERT-CC or other coordinator who will report to the vendor privately, or to a private service that will likewise report to the vendor privately. The finder allows the vendor an opportunity to diagnose and offer fully tested updates, workarounds or other corrective measures before detailed vulnerability or exploit information is shared publicly. If attacks are underway in the wild, earlier public vulnerability details disclosure can occur with both the finder and vendor working together as closely as possible to provide consistent messaging and guidance to customers to protect themselves.
Additional details on coordinated vulnerability disclosure can be found at http://blogs.technet.com/b/ecostrat/archive/2010/07/22/coordinated-vulnerability-disclosure-bringing-balance-to-the-force.aspx.
Microsoft calls on the broader community — from security researchers to vendors — to move to coordinated vulnerability disclosure. The need for coordination and shared responsibility has never been greater, as the computing ecosystem faces an unprecedented level of threat from the criminal element. To overcome that element, we must work together to improve the security of the entire ecosystem — and, as always, making customer protection our highest priority.
New Tools and Guidance
Microsoft also today released several resources that will help customers make informed decisions and manage risk. These releases demonstrate the company’s ongoing efforts to improve customer experience by developing and sharing guidance and solutions. Microsoft urges organizations to leverage this freely available guidance to protect against threats and improve their security processes.
Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET). EMET is a free tool that brings newer security mitigations to older Microsoft platforms and applications, both third-party and line of business applications. The tool specifically helps block targeted attacks against unfixed vulnerabilities. The tool will be available in August. Those interested can visit http://ecn.channel9.msdn.com/o9/edge/9900/29900/emetoverview72010_edge.wmv to watch an instructional video.
Microsoft vulnerability research (MSVR) paper. The MSVR was launched to share the lessons Microsoft has learned about building more secure software and responding to vulnerabilities in third-party products built on the company’s platform. Since its launch in 2008, the MSVR has worked with more than 30 vendors, helping improve both Microsoft’s software, as well as third-party products, ultimately keeping more people safe online. A more detailed account on how the MSVR has improved the overall security of Microsoft and third-party products can be downloaded at http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9738193.
A Report: Building a Safer, More Trusted Internet Through Information Sharing. In August 2008, Microsoft launched three security-related programs designed to collectively share more information with partners and customers. As outlined in this report, the three programs — MAPP, the Microsoft Exploitability Index and the MSVR — have evolved over the past two years, creating a safer online environment for people around the world. For example:
Sourcefire Inc. reported that in the race between exploit and protection, MAPP has helped to reduce the risk of attack in some cases by more than 75 percent.
According to iDefense Labs, the Microsoft Exploitability Index has helped reduce risk by providing system administrators with the information they need to prioritize security updates.
Since 2009, the MSVR program has identified 35 different software vulnerabilities affecting a total of 19 vendors. To date, 45 percent of those vulnerabilities have been resolved, helping better secure Microsoft’s platform and the larger computing environment.
The full report on the progress of these three programs can be viewed at http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9738546.
Given the increasing criminality of the threat landscape, it’s clear that a new approach to security is required. Microsoft encourages a shared sense of responsibility across the ecosystem as no one company, individual or technology can solve today’s complex security challenges. As such, Microsoft calls on the industry to continue to collaborate and coordinate to combat online threats and create a safer, more trusted Internet.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
Microsoft, Adobe Collaborate Against Online Threats
Google Crowned “King of Malware”
Jul 29, 2010 news Leave a comment
(The Hosting News) – Barracuda Networks Inc., a leading provider of content security, data protection and application delivery solutions, today released its Barracuda Labs 2010 Midyear Security Report, revealing data from two key areas: search engine malware and Twitter use and crime rate. The company is presenting this data at Security BSides Las Vegas and DefCON 18 this week in Las Vegas. The full report is available at the company’s security research portal at http://barracudalabs.com.
Searching for Malware
Barracuda Labs conducted a study across Bing, Google, Twitter and Yahoo!, over a roughly two-month period. The analysis reviews more than 25,000 trending topics and nearly 5.5 million search results. The purpose of the study was to analyse trending topics on popular search engines to understand the scope of the problem and to identify the types of topics used by malware distributors. The results will be presented at DefCON 18 on Saturday, July 31, at 11:00 a.m. PT, at the Riviera Hotel & Casino.
Key highlights from the search engine study include:
• Overall, Google takes the crown for malware distribution – turning up more than twice the amount of malware as Bing, Twitter and Yahoo! combined when searches on popular trending topics were performed. Google presents at 69 per cent; Yahoo! at 18 per cent; Bing at 12 per cent; and Twitter at one per cent.
• The average amount of time for a trending topic to appear on one of the major search engines after appearing on Twitter varies tremendously: 1.2 days for Google, 4.3 days for Bing, and 4.8 days for Yahoo!
• Over half of the malware found was between the hours of 4:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. GMT.
• The top 10 terms used by malware distributors include the name of a NFL player, three actresses, a Play*boy [sic] Playmate and a college student who faked his way into Harvard.
The Darkside of Twitter
Barracuda Labs analysed more than 25 million Twitter accounts, both legitimate and malicious. The purpose of this part of the study was to measure and analyse account behaviour on Twitter in order to model normal user behaviour and identify features that are strong indicators of illegitimate account use. The study reviews several key areas including True Twitter Users1, Twitter Crime Rate2, and Tweet Number3. The results will be presented at Security Bsides Las Vegas on Wednesday, July 28, at 3:00 p.m. PT, at the 2810 Resort.
Key highlights from the Twitter research include:
• In general, activity is increasing on Twitter: more users are coming online; True Twitter Users are tweeting more often, and even casual users are becoming more active. As users become more active, the malicious activity also increases
• Only 28.87 per cent of Twitter users are actual True Twitter Users
• Half of Twitter users tweet less than once a day, yet one in 10 users tweet five or more times a day and 30 per cent of Twitter accounts have never tweeted
• One in every eight Twitter users has at least 10 times more followers than they are following
• Only one in 10 users is following more than 100 users, and almost half are following less than five
• The Twitter Crime Rate for the first half of 2010 was 1.67 per cent
To review the complete Barracuda Labs 2010 Midyear Security Report and the company’s security portal, please visit http://barracudalabs.com.
About Barracuda Networks Inc.
Barracuda Networks Inc. combines premises-based gateways and software, virtual appliances, cloud services, and sophisticated remote support to deliver comprehensive content security, data protection and application delivery solutions. The company’s expansive product portfolio includes offerings for protection against email, Web and IM threats as well as products that improve application delivery and network access, message archiving, backup and data protection. Coca-Cola, FedEx, Harvard University, IBM, L’Oreal, and Europcar are among the more than 100,000 organizations protecting their IT infrastructures with Barracuda Networks’ range of affordable, easy-to-deploy and manage solutions. Barracuda Networks is privately held with its International headquarters in Campbell, Calif. For more information, please visit www.barracudanetworks.com.
Google Crowned “King of Malware”
Enterprise-Grade Virtualization Management Now Available
Jul 29, 2010 Xen, kvm, news, open source, virtualization Leave a comment
(The Hosting News) – Managing open source hypervisors, including Xen and KVM, became a lot easier today with the release of ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise edition from Convirture Corp.
The open source version of ConVirt has been available for more than three years and is broadly deployed and well-tested in real-world data centers — having been downloaded more than 30,000 times. In fact, ConVirt1.x is included in most major Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Open SUSE, Debian and others.
ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise extends ConVirt Open Source with the advanced automation and scalability features necessary for running large-scale or mission-critical virtualized environments. By delivering high availability, backup and recovery, storage and network automation, and enterprise-grade security, ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise enables IT managers to meet and exceed service levels while using infrastructure in the most efficient way.
ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise is also the go-to tool for enterprises ready to move beyond virtualized infrastructure management towards a hosted or private cloud model. With an extensive cloud management feature set, which includes multi-tenant security, delegated control, scheduled provisioning, resource limiting, and many more, ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise enables IT organizations to offer infrastructure-as-a-service, while ensuring full isolation and compliance with corporate policies.
“We’ve implemented a variety of virtualization platforms over the years and managing them all – especially the open source hypervisors – has always been the single biggest pain point,” said Steven Scoleri, Principal Architect at GSI Commerce, a leading provider of e-commerce and interactive marketing services. “Our beta test of ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise has gone very well and we think it just may be the game-changer we’ve been looking for. We no longer need experts on hand at all times to complete simple virtualization tasks. We look forward to further exploring ConVirt’s capabilities and using it to manage our entire open source-based virtual data center.”
“Until now, any organization that wanted a complete solution for managing and automating a virtual data center was locked into expensive and proprietary solutions like VMware vCenter,”,” said Arsalan Farooq, CEO of Convirture. “That changes today as ConVirt 2.0’s advanced automation, private cloud management, enterprise scalability and datacenter integration features now meet or exceed what’s available from proprietary platform vendors. With ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise, organizations considering Xen or KVM as open source alternatives to commercial virtualization platforms are no longer forced to compromise on manageability.”
About ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise
ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise supports all of the features available with the ConVirt 2.0 Open Source product including:
- Server pool-based management
- Templates-based provisioning
- Monitoring and configuration management
- Comprehensive virtual machine administration
- Highly scalable, 3-tier, standards-based architecture
In addition, ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise delivers scalability, automation, and private cloud management features that were previously available only for proprietary virtualization platforms, including:
- High availability: ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise ensures that mission-critical applications are always up and running by delivering a comprehensive high availability feature set, including virtual and physical machine failover;
- Backup and recovery: A full backup and recovery feature set ensures successful recovery from planned and unplanned outages. Scheduled and on-demand backups are supported. Restore modes can be for the most recent state or any earlier backup. Both virtual machine state and storage are captured, so virtual machines are brought up in a consistent state.
- Private Cloud Management: A data center that has been virtualized can be turned into a private, infrastructure-as-a-service cloud in a scalable and secure way, with support for full multi-tenant security, delegated control, scheduled provisioning, resource limiting and the ability to create virtual appliances that comply with corporate standards and publish them effortlessly to cloud users.
- Storage and network automation with ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise significantly streamlines the error-prone and time-consuming tasks of configuring network and storage in a virtualized environment. Storage configuration standardizes storage across a server pool by automating configuration of all storage types, including NFS, iSCSi, AOE, Fiber Channel and LVM. Network integration provides a centralized interface for managing virtual networks.
- Enterprise Integration: ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise provides a full suite of integration capabilities, including an open repository, command line interface, and programmatic APIs.
Pricing and Availability
ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise is available immediately direct from Convirture. Pricing starts at $1,495 per host for up to 10 hosts, with volume pricing available for larger environments. A “per virtual machine” pricing package is also available for ISP’s and hosting providers. More information is available at www.convirture.com/contact.html.
About Convirture
Convirture was founded in 2006 to help organizations effectively manage open source virtualization platforms. More information is available at www.convirture.com.
Enterprise-Grade Virtualization Management Now Available
PubCon Las Vegas 2010 Opens Exhibitor Applications
Jul 29, 2010 Las Vegas, PubCon, exhibitor, news Leave a comment
(The Hosting News) – The event gives exhibitors the opportunity to deliver their message directly to the exhibit hall audience during the PubCon Las Vegas conference.
Brett Tabke, PubCon’s organizer said, “Over the past decade PubCon has featured top technology exhibitors and we’re delighted to have Raven Internet Marketing Tools as a Gold Sponsor for this year’s PubCon Las Vegas.”
Tabke continued, “PubCon attendees look for educational materials and information from the variety of businesses that fill our exhibit halls, and exhibiting at PubCon Las Vegas 2010 is a great way to reach out to new potential clients and customers.”
PubCon offers a variety of promotional and marketing tools within the exhibitor and sponsorship packages currently available. These include platinum, gold and keynote level sponsorships, conference guidebook advertising, network event and party sponsorships, exhibit hall theater presentation sponsorships, exhibit booth space of all sizes, and more. This includes entry-level tabletop opportunities ideal for first-time exhibitors.
PubCon Las Vegas 2010 exhibit halls will be open from Wednesday, November 10 through Thursday, November 11.
Full details of the PubCon 2010 sponsor and exhibitor prospectus are available from today at www.pubcon.com
About PubCon
PubCon is a multi-track educational conference hosted by WebmasterWorld. PubCon events are for thought leaders and professionals Internet marketing, social media, search marketing and advertising to gather and to share best practices in the design, development, promotion and marketing of their Internet businesses and brands.
For more information about the conference, contact Brett Tabke at 512-231-8107 or brett at webmasterworld.com
In the U.K., contact Neil Marshall at 512-231-8107 ext 106 or engine at webmasterworld.com
For more details about sponsorship and exhibition opportunities, contact Strategic Marketing Director Joseph Morin at 512-231-8107 ext 104 or joe at webmasterworld.com.
PubCon Las Vegas 2010 Opens Exhibitor Applications
StratoGen Managed Hosting announces major upgrade
Jul 29, 2010 Industry News Leave a comment
(The Hosting News) – StratoGen completed today the final phase of its strategic upgrade of core network facilities. The upgraded network can carry more than 10GB of data per second and will provide customers with increased scalability, higher capacity and total resilience. It took 6 months to design, build and deploy.
The project has been completed 2 months early with zero downtime, which is testament to the talented engineers employed by the company.
Karl Robinson, Director of StratoGen, said: “We already have an enviable reputation for network quality and we continue to invest in our infrastructure to make sure we stay ahead. All our clients have a 100% uptime guarantee so it was vitally important that these significant upgrades were planned in such a way so as to avoid any service disruption. Naturally I’m very proud of the performance of our technical team as this will serve to highlight the strength of our service level agreement and the calibre of the engineers that look after our infrastructure.”
The deployment of all new high-end Cisco routers and switches has resulted in a significant speed increase and makes StratoGen one of the most resilient managed hosting providers in Europe. In addition, the platform allows for complex private network infrastructures and can cope with huge volumes of event driven Internet traffic.
“UK businesses have become increasingly aware of the importance of their online presence and this has led to a rapid growth in managed hosting. With these upgrades in place we can look forward to servicing many more customers and deploying complex hosting infrastructures with ease,” Robinson said.
For further information please visit http://www.stratogen.net/
About StratoGen
StratoGen is a managed hosting company providing enterprise VMware hosting, managed server hosting, colocation and connectivity products all backed by a 100% uptime SLA.
StratoGen have invested significant capital into building out a true enterprise class infrastructure that offers clients real business benefits whilst reducing their costs. High uptime, high throughput websites and online applications require resilient & scalable hosting solutions and this is where StratoGen is a market leader.
Source: StratoGen Managed Hosting announces major upgrade
Canadian Research Project Aims to Build Green Powered Data Center Grid
Jul 29, 2010 Hosting News Leave a comment
July 29, 2010 -- Canadian researcher group GreenStar Network is working towards reducing the rising carbon emissions created by data centers worldwide through green powered technology.
Tinet Links Hong Kong and Europe Via Low Latency Route
Jul 29, 2010 Hosting News Leave a comment
July 29, 2010 -- In its commitment to the IP and Ethernet wholesale market, global carrier Tinet has added a new terrestrial route to its backbone between Hong Kong and Europe.
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