Former US Transportation Department CIO Nitin Pradhan discusses how one can upgrade Microsoft enterprise email using a unified email management system. As a CIO, when what you are promoting email system goes down and brings your company to a halt, you immediately become the main favourite individual on the planet — in keeping with Edward Snowden. i do know . i have been there after I was CIO for the united states Department of Transportation. Microsoft’s software — Exchange and its new cloud incarnation, Office 365 — is the most excellent for intra- and inter-enterprise communications. It’s one of the vital critical systems any organization has, yet few CIOs treat it as such before a calamity happens. I’ve hit upon an easy strategy to address critical concerns linked to Microsoft enterprise email systems. As business requirements have changed over the years, organizations have needed to add peripheral software to support their core email system. That software features a range of security, backup, archiving, e-discovery, and... Read More »

Microsoft’s Xbox One is not just about taking on the lounge. It is a proving ground for CEO Steve Ballmer’s “One Microsoft” vision. Microsoft sold greater than 1 million Xbox Ones within 24 hours of the console’s Friday launch. Sony’s PlayStation 4 sold at in regards to the same rate when it debuted the week before. The launch is auspicious, if not necessarily extraordinary. It has been seven years since Microsoft released the Xbox 360, in any case; with such a lot pent-up demand, an early rush of sales was inevitable. Here’s what’s more important than day-one sales: whether the Xbox One’s performance remains strong enough to affirm the buyer-oriented aspects of retiring CEO Steve Ballmer’s “One Microsoft” strategy. [ Is Microsoft’s Surface 2 the ideal tablet for you? See Microsoft Surface 2: Hands-On Review. ] A recent Bloomberg article spoke to this query, claiming that former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, widely perceived as a pacesetter for Ballmer’s job, would consider jettisoning Xbox and Bing... Read More »

FedRAMP’s role in making cloud services safer also helps agencies offset a number of the complexity in their IT operations, says NIST’s Ron Ross. If you spend any time hearing what government IT executives are talking about in Washington nowadays — besides the NSA’s data-collection practices and what everyone will need to have learned from HealthCare.gov — it’s hard to disregard at the least some discussion about secure cloud computing and a federal program called FedRAMP. Talk to IT executives outside of Washington, however, and it’s evident that discussions about FedRAMP  and its impact on cloud service providers are reaching far beyond the Beltway and rippling in the course of the boardrooms of IT services providers. As Amazon Web Services VP Teresa Carlson said in a contemporary interview: “Cloud companies can not perform any [government] procurement or award without having the ability to achieve the FedRAMP standards.” For those new to the discussion, FedRAMP is a program cooked up by a gaggle of... Read More »

Leading cloud security group lists the “Notorious Nine” top threats to cloud computing in 2013; most are already known but defy 100% solution. Shadow this can be a good thing until it runs into the protection of cloud computing. All too often line-of-business users are establishing applications and moving data into the cloud without understanding the entire security implications. The Cloud Security Alliance has prepare an inventory of the nine most prevalent and serious security threats in cloud computing. A lot of them relate in a single way or another to the weaknesses implicit in Shadow IT. The alliance bills its list because the “Notorious Nine: Cloud Computing Threats in 2013.” The CSA itself was formed in 2008 at the heels of the tips Systems Security Association CISO Forum in Las Vegas. Jim Reavis, a well-known security researcher and author, issued a choice for action to secure the cloud on the event, resulting in the founding of the organization. The report was released in February... Read More »

Google removes an undocumented App Ops control panel from its latest release, Android 4.4.2, that had let users choose which app permissions to enable. Google Barge: 10 Informative Images (click image for larger view) Google, in its Android 4.4.2 release every week ago, removed an undocumented, experimental privacy control panel that were released inadvertently in July as part Android 4.3. The control panel, called App Ops, allowed Android users to disclaim the provision of selected permissions in an app. Though it was not accessible to users without some technical knowledge, it was immediately noticed and made available through Android apps that provided shortcuts to the hidden interface. App Ops turns Android’s permission model on its head. As opposed to allowing the developer to offer an inventory of requested (and customarily necessary) permissions to the user for all-or-nothing approval, the control panel allowed users to disable certain permissions while leaving others in place. In a blog post Wednesday, Peter Eckersley, technical projects director on the Electronic... Read More »