Notes from the Consultant’s Jungle

Undoubtedly you’ve heard by now that Intel has a bid on the table to buy McAfee (for $7.7B).  We’ve written before about the collaboration that’s been going on between the two companies for almost two years now, which we suspect is a leveraging of features at both ends of the stack to improve security of [...]

[Read more →]

As someone with a strong operational ethic, one of my pet peeves is the colo site that resembles a monthly self-storage facility.  I’m referring here, to allowing (or tolerating) tenants storing boxes, material, and debris in their cages.
A colocation facility that has cardboard and other such material in customer cages shows very poorly.  That is, [...]

[Read more →]

In my classes at the university, I sometimes give students a project to create a malware pet shop or malware zoo.  The purpose is to make the students more aware of the “biodiversity” that really exists out there in the malware world.  We also often talk about the increasing use of malware and other network-based [...]

[Read more →]

In my IS Security class at the university, I was recently moderating a discussion thread where my students posted their opinions on Internet content filtering. The question was a simple one, “Some schools and libraries use Internet content filters to prohibit users from accessing undesirable Web sites. These filters are designed to protect individuals, yet [...]

[Read more →]

Confusion Persists
Through several posts on this blog, we discussed the many aspects of confusion around the term, “Cloud Computing.”  After attending this year’s Cloud Expo in New York City and seeing the same three-layer stack (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) slide in fifty half of the presentations, I have to conclude that confusion still exists in the [...]

[Read more →]

We’ve just wrapped up day-one of this year’s Cloud Expo at the Javits Convention Center in New York City.  You know, it’s been nearly a year since I attended Cloud World in San Francisco, and over that period of time it surprises me how little new anyone is saying about cloud computing.  It borders on [...]

[Read more →]

As I’ve watched the momentum of the Cloud, it’s caused me to reflect upon earlier discussions about data center physical security.  It’s long been my opinion that physical security will soon emerge (or re-emerge) as a top issue in data center planning, since businesses and consumers alike are increasingly reliant on the data and transaction [...]

[Read more →]

When launching a new data center build project, where the data center will be located is a fundamental issue. There are many factors in deciding where the data center will be, but all of these factors can arguably be consolidated into two issues- Risk and Cost.
We mention risk in terms of Risk Management. [...]

[Read more →]

Posted by:  Bob Landstrom
The latest issue of CIO Insight has results from their annuals survey of top ten priorities of CIOs.  The online presentation can be found here.  Looking over this year’s top ten list left me with a few notable observations.

[Read more →]

Data
Center consolidation and Data Center outsourcing are
top of mind for many CIO’s these days. Many companies
have ‘90s vintage IT facilities that not only do not
have the availability to align with the Business’ operating
model but also are struggling to keep up with the power
and cooling demands of contemporary computing systems.
The deployment of multi-core processors and blade-based
systems [...]

[Read more →]