Showing posts with label Operating Systems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Operating Systems. Show all posts

March 31, 2013

Searching For Cybersecurity Warriors

For those interested in the field of cybersecurity, I wanted to share some useful websites that I've come across: 

1) Cybersecurity Training and Competitions

Cyber Aces--provides cyber training and competitions for high school and college students, including:

Cyber Foundations: For high school students, you can visit the online Cyber Centers and learn the fundamentals of cybersecurity, including modules in networking, operating systems, and systems administration and then take cyber quizzes to compete for honors, awards, scholarships, and even corporate internships. 

Cyber Quests: For college students, you can take "cyber quests" or online competitions associated with the U.S. Cyber Challenge, to demonstrate knowledge of infrastructure security, digital forensics, vulnerability analysis, packet capture analysis, and more. Winners can get an invitation to Cyber Camps for specialized advanced training. 

2) Information Assurance Scholarships

The Department of Defense has a generous Information Assurance scholarship program where recipients generally work as a full-time DoD employee for one year for each year of scholarship received. 

Similarly, the National Science Foundation offers scholarship where recipients work for a federal agency in the Federal Cyber Service (Cyber Corps) upon graduation. 

These are some amazing training and scholarship opportunities to ready the next generation of cybersecurity professionals. 

In a 2012 movie that I was watching recently called "Abducted," the main character tells the others with whom she is being held hostage that they need to fight their way out, and she exhorts them to have "No fear, no excuses, just results"--this is what we need in cybersecurity today! ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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October 2, 2010

You Can Slow Them Down, But You Can’t Stop Them

What happens when someone does something and you don’t like it—I mean you really don’t like it (and that something is painful—physically, emotionally, or even financially)—you try to get them to stop.

You see it all starts when we are little and growing up and big brother Johnny pulls our hair or takes our toy and we go running to mommy, yelling to make Johnny stop. Mommy comes out standing straight and tall and pointing her sharpened finger at Johnny, and looking Johnny straight in the eyes says stop bothering you’re little sister. Johnny looks down, sulks, and says okay (maybe even expressing a barely audible, and hollow, sorry). But then what happens when mommy leaves the room for a few minutes, Johnny’s at it again.

And that’s what happens when Johnny is doing something wrong…imagine if he believes he is doing the right thing all along, of course, he continues on his merry way doing what he was doing.

Organizations, like people, seek to stop the pain as well and if they can’t compete in the markets, they take it elsewhere.

The Wall Street Journal, 2-3 October 2010, reports “Microsoft Lawsuit Seeks To Slow Google.”

Like Johnny, Google (although technically smaller than Microsoft revenue-wise) is doing something that Microsoft really doesn’t like; Google is walloping Microsoft in smartphones: “Microsoft’s share of the worldwide smartphone market this year is expected to fall to 6.8% from 13% in 2008, while Google is forecast to jump to 16% from less than 1% two years ago, according to IDC.”

Microsoft like the kid, who wants the hair pulling to stop, and they can’t make it stop themselves through a competitive product at this time, is running to “Mommy,” in this case the courts, and seeking relief by suing Motorola, the handset maker for the Android.

As one patent lawyer put it: “My gut feeling is Microsoft is losing the hand-held wars and they’re using their patent portfolio to get some of it back.”

Certainly, Microsoft isn’t alone is using this slowing tactic, for example, recently HP filed to sue Oracle for hiring their ex-CEO Mark Hurd, even though as 24-7 press release notes California tends to favor the free movement of employees and do not enforce non-competition agreements.

While Microsoft believes their new Windows Phone 7 (i.e. the Windows Mobile replacement) is the answer to their smartphone operating system prayers, and will help them to compete against the Google Android (and the Apple iPhone), the market results remain to be seen.

If Microsoft continues with an inferior product, then like a Johnny in the right, Google will continue to go right on beating Microsoft at their own game (unless of course, the courts say otherwise).


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July 19, 2009

Battle of the Tech Titans

Google and Microsoft are going head-to-head, and they are going for the jugular.

ComputerWorld stated in the July 6/July 13, 2009: “Google Set to Wage OS War with Microsoft.” Wired wrote in August 2009 issue according to CEO Eric Schmidt, Google is the “anti-Microsoft”.

According to Wired, the two companies are fighting for the title: King of Technology.

Here’s a quick breakdown:

Google

Microsoft

Web Browser

Chrome (& FireFox distribution)

Explorer

Operating System

Android, Chrome OS

Windows, XP, Vista, Mobile

Business Productivity Suite

Apps Suite

Office

Search

Google

Bing

Online Advertising

Adwords, Adsense, Doubleclick

aQuantive

On one hand, Google is the undisputed master of the Internet delivering 78.5% of search results in the U.S. (versus 8.2% for Microsoft ) and pulling in $22 billion in revenue in 2008 for text ads. On the other hand, Microsoft owns the personal computer environment with 90% of the operating systems for all laptops and desktops yielding $16 billion in 2008 sales and $14.3 billion in 9 months for it’s productivity applications (versus Google which mostly gives away is email and other online applications); further Microsoft has 70% of the browser market to Google 2% for Chrome. (Wired July 13, 2009)

So is there really a full tech war going on or are Microsoft and Google just chipping away on the edges of each others territory, using so-called guerrilla warfare tactics?

It’s a little of each. Both companies are technology behemoths trying to be the king of the tech jungle. But they have very different approaches. Microsoft believes that computer software is the key to tech kingdom, while Google believes that the Internet is the path to people’s technology hearts.

Google is willing to give away software to challenge Microsoft on its home turf, and Microsoft is investing in its new search engine to erode the core strength of its competitor. It’s a jab for jab face-off where I would imagine we would continue to see the corporate fists flying for as long the two are standing.

From a strategic point of view, Microsoft has such a dominant position on our computers both in our homes and businesses, it is hard to imagine them being easily dethroned. Microsoft also has a war chest and the ability to replenish it to fight a darn good fight. But many companies have been smug and have lost to a determined challenger.

Google is coming out strong for its innovativeness and can’t turn down offer of free products. If the television business is any predictor of a winner-take-all, television’s advertising revenue built an incredible entertainment industry that we all enjoy and which still largely dominates today.

And now I think I will go watch 60 minutes on my big flat screen TV.


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May 2, 2009

Oracle - An Architecture Treasure-trove

Anyone following the strategic acquisitions by Oracle the last few years can see a very clear trend: Oracle is amassing a treasure-trove of business applications that are powerful, interoperable, and valuable to mission delivery.
Most recently, Oracle snapped up Sun for $7.38 billion, right from under the clutches of IBM!
Oracle with $22.4 billion in revenue in 2008 and 55% of license revenue generated overseas “is the world’s largest business software company, with more than 320,000 customers—including 100 of the Fortune 100—representing a variety of sizes and industries in more than 145 countries around the globe.”(www.oracle.com)
Oracle’s roots are as a premiere database company. However, since 2004, they made more than 50 acquisitions in calculated business areas.
The Wall Street Journal, 21 April 2009, identifies some of these notable buys:
2004—PeopleSoft for human resources and financial management.
2005—Siebel for customer relationship management.
2007—Hyperion Solutions for business intelligence.
2008—BEA Systems for infrastructure management.
2009—Sun Microsystems for software, servers, and storage devices.
Oracle has been able to acquire companies with operating-profit margins of 10% and within six months expand those margins to 40%.”
With the recent purchase of Sun, Oracle is gaining control of critical open-source software such as Java programming technology, Solaris operating system, and MySQL database.
According to Forrester Research, “Forty-six percent of businesses plan to deploy open-source software in 2009.” Oracle can now provide an important service in product support and updates for this. (Wall Street Journal, 22 April 2009)
In addition, Oracle also provides various middleware to integrate business applications and automate processes.
From databases to end-user applications, from service-oriented architecture to infrastructure management, from content management to business intelligence, Oracle has put together a broad impressive lineup. Of course, this is NOT an endorsement for Oracle (as other companies may have as good or even better solutions), but rather an acknowledgement of Mr. Ellison’s keen architecture strategy that is building his company competitively and his product offering compellingly. Ellison is transforming the company from a successful single brand that was at risk of becoming commoditized to a multi-faceted brand with synergies among its various lines of business and products.
Some lessons for enterprise architects and CIOs: Build your product lineup, create synergies, uniformly brand it, and be number one or number two in every product category that you’re in (as Jack Welch famously advised) and grow, grow, grow!

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