Are You Maximizing Facebook for Your Business?

Many businesses understand that they must have a social media strategy, but many companies do not fully understand how to accomplish this. In order to be successful, let’s first understand the demographics of Facebook. According to a recent report on Pingdom the average age for a Facebook user is 40.5 years old. Here are some additional stats that may alter your way of thinking about Facebook, 65% of Facebook users are 35 or older and Facebook and Twitter have the same gender distribution: 40% male, 60% female.

Here is what is truly interesting about the age trend for Facebook and Twitter. Compared to a previous survey Pingdom did 2.5 years ago, the age of the average Facebook user has gone up two years, while the age of the average Twitter user has gone down two years. In other words, Twitter’s user base is getting younger, while Facebook’s is getting older.

So now that you understand who is using Facebook, let’s start to figure out how you maximize your exposure. The first thing you need to consider is how to build a strong fan base. Your Facebook page can drive traffic to your website, increase sales and build customer loyalty, but like anything else you have to carefully create your presence. Make sure your page is using your company name and any specialized keywords that your business is typically found under.

You want your page to stand out from competitors, to do this, you need to engage your fan base, for example, you can customize the tabs of your page to highlight your business, including photos, videos, hot items and genera discussions. You also need to keep the content fresh, there is nothing like going back to a website several times to see no updates, so while it may take you some time each day, make sure you stay current with your content, otherwise your fan base will go elsewhere. If you want to grow your fan base quickly, Host contests or giveaways, according to Facebook, research by Forrester shows that contests, giveaways and promotions are the fastest ways to build fans to your page.

Another great way to increase your exposure is to collaborate and connect with Facebook Applications, they are a great way to network and do business through your Page. Facebook has over 50,000 applications on its platform. There are Facebook apps available for everything, including Twitter, Wordpress, Google Reader, and many others. To get your business moving start with the following, and build from there, Add the RSS Feed application to incorporate your blog , add the LinkedIn Profile application to promote your LinkedIn account by posting a badge on your Page, add the Twitter application to incorporate your Tweets.

Once you have built your page you need to gain exposure by getting everyone involved, don’t just put up a Business Page and forget about it. Monitor the feeds, make updates and discuss industry trends, product reviews and relevant events. Encourage employees to be active and participate on your Page. The more people involved on Facebook, the more exposure your company will receive With fresh content and lots of activity, your Page will build in strength and become successful — no one will follow a stagnate page. You should also join other Facebook groups and become fans of other Business Pages to build a network of conversations

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

.

Can we protect against nation-state espionage?

Researchers at Kaspersky Lab have uncovered new nation-state espionage malware that has links to two previous identified espionage tools known as Flame and Gauss, and it appears to be a “high-precision, surgical attack tool” targeting victims in Lebanon, Iran and elsewhere.

The new malware has been coined miniFlame, although the attackers who designed it called it by two other names – “SPE” and “John.” MiniFlame appears to be used to gain control of and obtain increased spying capability over select computers originally infected by the Flame and Gauss spyware.

According to Wired, “It is the fourth piece of nation-state malware discovered in the last year that appears to have been created by the same group behind Stuxnet, the groundbreaking cyberweapon that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear program and is believed to have been created by the U.S. and Israeli governments. The others – all designed for espionage rather than destruction – are DuQu, Flame, and Gauss.”

“With Flame, Gauss and miniFlame, we have probably only scratched [the] surface of the massive cyber-spy operations ongoing in the Middle East,” the Kaspersky researchers write in a report released Monday. “Their true, full purpose remains obscure and the identity of the victims and attackers remain unknown.”

The report was released as the U.S. continues to make claims against China for its involvement in nation-state cyberespionage. Most notably are the alleged hacks against Google to obtain intelligence about political dissidents and against defense contractors to obtain military secrets.

The risk with miniFlame/SPE malware is that it can be used on its own as a small, standalone data collection tool, or it can be inserted into Flame or Gauss. Until recently, it was assumed that Flame and Gauss were independent nation-state projects that had no connection; but the discovery of miniFlame is the first solid clue that the two projects came out of the same “cyberweapon factory” and were part of the same larger operation.

While the targets appear to be focused on the Middle East, the question must still be answered as to how far this has spread and what information are these countries trying to obtain. While many of us feel that our data is protected and even if it is not, what is the real harm in being compromised, the bigger risk is what happens when the financial institutions are attacked – replacing a credit card is an inconvenient, not being able to use credit cards could impact a nation.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Now it is Microsoft versus Google in German patent lawsuit

Yesterday Microsoft informed the judge that it will amend their patent infringement lawsuit against Motorola Mobility to include Google as a defendant. Microsoft is suing over European patent EP0845124, which covers a “computer system for identifying local resources and method therefore. The same technology is addressed in U.S. Patent no 6,240,360.

The German lawsuit, filed in April, goes after Android’s Google Map app, which Motorola spent a good amount of time yesterday denying Microsoft’s infringement accusations without ever getting into actual server process discussions. Microsoft has aggressively going after Android handset makers to agree to license agreements, including LG, Samsung and HTC. All have signed on to avoid the legal battle, which can put up to $15 per handset they sell.

Motorola has held out and had hoped that it’s acquisition by parent company Google would prevent Microsoft from taking them on – a strategy that has ultimately failed. Motorola has been forced to pull virtually all of their smartphones from retailers in Germany due to previous patent litigation with Apple and Microsoft. The move today is believed to show that the Android OS is not free and that the Windows Phone system would be a worthy alternative.

Once again Patents will force manufacturer behavior, which will end up providing the consumer with little choice in which phone they can purchase. It would be interesting if these companies would put more of the legal costs into R&D and develop the next generation phone rather than continually fight each other for positioning. The concept of the strong will survive, now appears to mean that the one with the best lawyers will survive – not the best product!

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Tweeting Tips

Twitter remains one of the top social media tools on the market today, according to Twitter they process 340,000,000 Tweets per day and have over 140,000,000 active users. With this kind of access one can imagine why Twitter remains a key tool for successful marketing strategies. While each organization will find a different level of success, there are a few tips to help maximize your success on Twitter.

Keep your Tweet to 125 characters or less:

You only get 140 characters and the goal is not just to tweet your message but to get other people to re-tweet the message so you can maximize your coverage. If you max out, the retweet may cut off the last part of your message, and should that be the URL – you will impact the effect of the tweet. So try to keep your message short!

Follow the right people:

The common misconception is that the more followers you have the better coverage you will get. The reality is that a more targeted approach generates greater results. You do not want to follow everybody that follows you – you need to do your homework and make sure the company or person you follow meets your standards.

You are far better off having 25 super followers that are willing to retweet your message and or post about your products on their blog than trying to gain 6,000 random followers. A good place to start is trying to follow industry experts who do a lot of retweeting – the goal is to get your tweet retweeted. So you may wonder how you gain these super users, the first thing to do is to start following them, some will follow you back if your tweets have value to them. You should also follow their blog and comment as frequently as possible, this will most likely get you recognized and increase your odds of having your message picked up.

Utilize Twitter’s search feature:

One of the most underutilized feature available from Twitter is their search function,, located at http://search.twitter.com. This search feature allows you to see what people are talking about in real time, which can change how you tweet. It is also recommended that you get an RSS feed for the keywords that are most important to you. You can do this on Twitter by clicking “RSS feed for this query” near the bottom of the page after entering a search term.

In addition, you should be aware of which hashtags are critical for your industry and business. To identify the right hashtags for you, you can go to hashtags.org and enter any hashtag and see how it’s trending.

The time of your Tweet is critical:

Most users of Twitter do not read tweets that are more than a few hours old, so you want to send your tweets during the optimal time of the day. The best time to do this is during business hours for the Eastern Time Zone. Retweeting tends to drop off by the end of the day. Of course each business is different so while this is a good general rule to follow, understand your industry may have a more optimal time, especially if you are focused globally.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Walmart versus Amazon

The lines between on-line retailers and brick and mortar have become blurred even further today as Walmart announces same day delivery in several launch cities. In competing with Amazon (AMZN) and their push to deliver products the same day to meet consumer’s requirement for instant gratification, Walmart has conveniently launched their same day delivery service jut in time for Christmas.

For a flat $10.00 you can have all of your items delivered the same day, Walmart intends to utilize their large quantity of store locations to act as warehouses versus Amazon’s methodology of using strategically place warehouses to support the same day shipping. In reality Walmart has the distinct advantage since you can find them virtually everywhere – this expands their product availability and allows them far more flexibility in the shipping process.

Just like all things, the old become new – if you remember it was predicted that on-line retailers would make the old brick and mortar stores obsolete, and to a large degree we saw many icons collapse as on-line retailers were able to offer lower cost for the same products (does anyone remember Circuit City or Comp USA?). But in the end we have seen a integration of on-line and brick and mortar, in rare instances the exclusive on-line or brick and mortar store has been able to thrive, but the most successful ones had to become more than just a one trick pony.

\It will be interesting to see who ends up winning the holiday season, Walmart or Amazon.  What I can predict is that one of them will see their stock price soar while the other will see it decline dramatically. Investors will be watching this battle closely to see which power house retailer comes out on top.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Apple’s New iPhone 5

Apple’s new smartphone is unleashed. Apple unveiled the iPhone 5, at a press event in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Wednesday. Apple has made significant changes to the iPhone 5, which Apple is quite proud of. “We’ve updated every aspect of iPhone 5,” Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller said at the event. The device goes on sale September 21 and here are some of the major changes from previous versions.

iPhone 5 provides a larger, 4-inch screen while utilizing a longer body, which also will provide another row of apps (because you can never have enough apps). This will also mean all apps will need to be updated to take advantage of the larger screen size, those apps that are built for the oler versions will still work, but will have black borders in the extra space.

The iPhone 5 is thinner and lighter than older versions. The body is built entirely of glass and aluminum, and measures 7.6 mm thick and weighs 112 grams. The iPhone 5’s screen delivers a 326 PPI, 1136×640-pixel Retina display and provides a considerably sharper display than the previous apple phones. The iPhone 5 also features Apple’s latest processor, the A6 chip. The processor is two times faster than the A5 chip and is considerably smaller. That means better graphics performance in addition to iOS improvements and better gaming. Battery life is designed to last just as long even with the improved performance. Apple says that you should be able to get eight hours of talk time, eight hours browsing and 10 hours of video playback with the iPhone 5.

The new iPhone 5 still uses the 8-megapixel sensor, but it is signifintly smaller than the camera in the iPhone 4S. There are also some great improvements, including a dynamic low-light mode, a better image-sensor processor, spatial noise reduction and a smart filter that can recognize where uniform color and texture should be within a shot. Despite the improvements, Apple claims the camera is 40 percent faster at taking photos.

Apple is now using three microphones to improve voice recognition and noise reduction. Apple also improved the iPhone 5’s speaker. The iPhone 5 will come with new Apple EarPods that the company claims are more durable, have a more natural fit, and boast impressive acoustic quality.

One of the more frustrating change will probably be the elimination of the 30-pin dock connector. The iPhone 5 has a smaller, 8-pin dock connector, which Apple has named Lightning. Apple’s belief is that the world is relying more on wireless than hard connections. Apple has worked with several manufacturers to create compatible accessories, but for those who do want to stick with their old accessories, Apple has made an adapter plug.

In the U.S., the phone will be offered via AT&T, Verizon and Sprint on Sept. 21. The iPhone 5 will come in three storage sizes: 16GB, 32GB and 64GB, and will cost $200, $300, and $400, respectively, with a two-year contract. For those who want Apple’s latest creation in their hands on launch day, you can start pre-ordering the phone a week in advance, starting on Sept. 14.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Marketing & Blogs

One of the challenges I have had to face with E-Marketing is how to build a message that people want to read. We know that the length of the message should be limited and the images should be catchy but is the reader really getting anything out of the message itself?

One of the methods I have found to be successful is using a blog in conjunction with E-Marketing. Based on personal experience I saw a substantial increase in the number of page views on the blog after launching an E-Marketing campaign that pointed the reader to the blog. In my research, I found that most people view a blog as informational, whereas the corporate web site is viewed to sell you something. People tend to let their guard down a little bit as they see the blog as informational; and less of a sales pitch.

This allows you to accomplish your first objective, get the reader to execute the call to action. If the call to action is to have them view the blog and read the article and learn more about the company then this becomes a great tandem to be successful.

Of course the real objective is not accomplished unless you can convert the reader into a sales prospect. So the Blog needs to have carefully placed touch points to promote your products. The E-Marketing to the Blog will increase brand awareness but it does not guarantee that the reader will take the next call to action.

So how you do go about this? First do not try to write blog articles that are entirely about your product, company or any other hard sales approach. The articles should be relevant to your industry so that the right audience can take away valuable information if they read the blog. You should have a soft pitch at the end of the article and you should have carefully orchestrated ads on the Blog (just like they would see if you had Google ads on the site).

The key here is to remember that people buy because they have a need; the need is different for each company in both requirements and timing. If you can build a readership base of your blog with valuable information that keeps readers coming back on their own, the end result will be that the prospect will contact you when his need becomes strong enough to make your product a top priority. Acquire enough readers and you will have a steady stream of hot prospects!

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Can The Internet Be Silenced?

Worldwide, suppression of free speech is growing and nowhere is that trend more evident than on the World Wide Web. The man who created the Web, Tim Berners-Lee, felt compelled to mention this trend while unveiling the newest report on how governments manage the online lives of their constituents. The bottom line, Berners-Lee said, is that there is no kill switch for Internet freedom.

There is no off switch for the Internet, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who's widely acknowledged as the father of the Web, said in London when launching the World Wide Web Index report for 2012.

Growing suppression of free speech, both online and offline, is the major challenge to the Web's future, Berners-Lee stated. Countries in the Middle East as well as China, have continually attempted to suppress free speech, but information seems to find ways to get in and out of these countries.

Even the United States has attempted to insert an Internet kill switch, but this was dropped after strong opposition from a wide spectrum of society here, including consumer advocates and privacy groups. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who pushed for the kill switch provision to be included in the Protecting Cybersecurity as a National Asset Act, said in a TV interview that the US government should follow the lead of China in this area.

Several Western democracies that scored high on the Web Index either monitor citizens' access to the Internet or restrict it in some way. They include the UK and Australia, which scored 93.83 and 88.44 on the index, respectively. The US scored 97. The Index assesses the use, utility and impact of the Web around the world. It looked at 61 countries With Sweden ranking number one followed by the US and the UK. respectively.

Ultimately, the web provides access to content and information that just cannot be stopped, as long as there are social sites, information will continue to permeate throughout the world. In the end we as the people control the flow of content, there has been a substantial shift in the power of information as the web has been adopted by more countries and despite certain governments best efforts, there is just no way to silence our voices.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Java 7 Patch Contains Critical Vulnerability

According to security researchers from Security Explorations, the Java 7 security update released Thursday contains a vulnerability that can be exploited to escape the Java sandbox and execute arbitrary code on the underlying system.

Security Explorations sent a report about the vulnerability to Oracle on Friday together with a proof-of-concept exploit, Adam Gowdiak, the security company's founder and CEO said Friday via email. The company doesn't plan to release any technical details about the vulnerability publicly until Oracle addresses it, Gowdiak said.

According to Gowdiak, Security Explorations privately reported 29 vulnerabilities in Java 7 to Oracle back in April, including the two that are now actively exploited by attackers.  The new vulnerability discovered by Security Explorations in Java 7 Update 7 can be combined with some of the vulnerabilities left unpatched by Oracle to achieve a full JVM sandbox bypass again.

"Once we found that our complete Java sandbox bypass codes stopped working after the update was applied, we looked again at POC codes and started to think about the possible ways of how to fully break the latest Java update again," Gowdiak said. "A new idea came, it was verified and it turned out that this was it."

Based on the experience of Security Explorations researchers with hunting for Java vulnerabilities so far, Java 6 has better security than Java 7. "Java 7 was surprisingly much easier for us to break," Gowdiak said. "For Java 6, we didn't manage to achieve a full sandbox compromise, except for the issue discovered in Apple Quicktime for Java software."

The most recent security problems with Java are far from unique. Security firm Sophos, for example, blames underlying Java vulnerability for attacks by the Flashback malware last April that infected one out of five Macs.

The risks do not outweigh the rewards, security expert Dominique Karg, the founder and chief hacking officer of AlienVault, a security software company said. “I'd say 90 percent of users don't need Java anymore, I consider myself a ‘power user’ and the last and only time I realized I had Java installed on my Mac was when I had to update it.”

Most security researchers have said it before: If you don't need Java, uninstall it from your system. 

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Was The FBI Hacked?

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is claiming that a statement made by members of AntiSec this weekend that they hacked the laptop of an FBI special agent and acquired a file containing 12 million Apple device IDs and associated personal information is completely false. The FBI also claims that is does not or ever did possess a file containing the data the hackers claim they stole.

In a statement released on Tuesday September 4th, the FBI said, “The FBI is aware of published reports alleging that an FBI laptop was compromised and private data regarding Apple UDIDs was exposed. At this time there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised or that the FBI either sought or obtained this data.”

However, this weekend, the hacker group AntiSec released an encrypted file that contained 1 million of the 12 million Apple device IDs and device names that the group said was obtained from an FBI computer they hacked. The hackers claim the original file contained 12 million IDs, including personal information, but they chose to releas only 1 million (minus the personal data) in an encrypted file and published it on torrent sites.

The hackers state in their post that they released the Apple UDIDs so that people would know that the FBI may be tracking their devices and also because, “we think it’s the right moment to release this knowing that Apple is looking for alternatives for those UDID currently … but well, in this case it’s too late for those concerned owners on the list.” Apple has been called out numerous times for hard-coding the IDs in devices, since they can be misused by application developers and others to identify a user, when combined with other personal information, and track them. Last April, Apple began rejecting applications that track their UDIDs.

In case you are concerned that your UDID has been leaked, the Next Web has developed a tool for users to check if their Apple UDID is among those that the hackers released over the weekend. For years I have had to listen to MAC users tell me how they do not get viruses and that the PC is a bad knock off of Apple's design, and I am not totally in disagreement here, but all technology has design flaws and given time and desire, someone will find a way to exploit it. This once again comes down to how the company will react and modify their behavior to protect consumes and enterprises.

While we may see this issue as being exclusively related to the consumer who buys the Apple product, more and more enterprises are permitting employees to their bring your own devices to use at the company, this equipment will find its way on to the enterprise network and can potentially compromise corporate data.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Malware Attacks Explode In 2012

According to The third edition of the FireEye Advanced Threat Report, “Compared to the second half of 2011, the number of infections per company rose by 225% in the first half of 2012. If you compare the first six months of 2011 with the first six months of 2012, the increase seen is even larger at 392%.”

The following is a summary of the key findings that the report found:

• Organizations are seeing a massive increase in advanced malware that is bypassing their traditional security defenses.

• The patterns of attack volumes vary substantially among different industries, with organizations in healthcare and energy/utilities seeing particularly high growth rates.

• The dangers posed by email-based attacks are growing ever more severe, with both link- and attachment-based malware presenting significant risks.

• In their efforts to evade traditional security defenses, cybercriminals are increasingly employing limited-use domains in their spear phishing emails.

• The variety of malicious email attachments is growing more diverse, with an increasing range of files evading traditional security defenses.

The reality is that hackers are becoming more innovative than the intrusion software consumers and enterprises run to protect themselves. To make matters worse the anti-virus software has become almost as intrusive as the viruses. I have one Laptop that is less than two years old running Windows 8 (with no issues) and Norton Anti-Virus provided by Comcast. I had to shut off the E-mail Anti-Virus module because it was literally bringing the machine to a crawl.

If the protection software becomes too over bearing, it will kill productivity, so ideally the threat protection should occur prior to the mail infrastructure, but this will mean new appliances and new methods to detect an ever changing hacking model.

The report found that hackers have increased the number of "throwaway" domains used in phishing E-mails in order to evade technologies that rely on domain reputation analysis and URL blacklists. The number of domains used fewer than ten times rose 45 percent from the second half of 2011. "The domains are so infrequently used that they fly under the radar of URL blacklists and reputation analysis and remain largely ignored and unknown," the report says. For those readers looking for more information on phishing attacks, check out PCWorld’s article 4 Security Tips Spurred by Recent Phishing Attacks on Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo.

The bottom line is that phishing attacks have become part of the Internet culture, playing it safe is and questioning anything that seems too good to be true or does not make sense is a great way to stay ahead of the hackers.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

#help! Japan is Considering Using Twitter and Social Networks for Emergency Notifications

On Wednesday the Japanese government hosted a panel discussion in Tokyo to discuss placing emergency calls through social networks during natural disasters, as reported by PCWorld. This was the first event of a three part program that will run through March of next year to discuss how to use social media during large disasters. The panel included the head of Twitter Japan as well as Yahoo Japan officials.

The thought is that when traditional voice-based infrastructure is impacted the social network might be a better alternative to process emergency requests. During Japan’s Earthquake that impacted several nuclear power plants, many of the Japanese citizens were only able to get updated information via the social network. The culture is quite fanatic about using cell phones and social media, so the government see this as a natural evolution for their emergency communication strategy.

On the surface this sounds like a practical and plausible solution to a difficult situation, however having managed a notifications platform, there is a lot of concern from a product perspective. Posting content and accessing the social media is only viable if the people have access to the service, cell phone service is not designed for the level of usage that occurs during a disaster. Alert notifications are a great tool, but you must have reserved capacity and if you are only using the service on rare occasion, your cost for reserving the bandwidth could become quite expensive over time.

But let’s assume the government can solve the bandwidth issue, now the question comes around geo-presence, how do you know where the person is if they are using it to tweet in an emergency? Yes the phone probably has a GPS chip and the location can be triangulated to near proximity of the cell tower, but how do you control this, how do you use it only in an emergency? You could probably build an app for this, but that would mean that now everyone has to install the application to tweet in an emergency and how do you train the masses on how to use the social network?

Finally, and this is my biggest concern, how do you prevent hacking, both on the notification and 911 inbound tweets. None of the social media sites that I have used provide any moderator level controls, which means if the government Twitter account gets hacked and someone send out an emergency alert, there would be wide spread panic.

Don’t get me wrong, these are the right discussion to be having, we need to find new ways to communicate to large groups of people, especially in a disaster, but if we are going to enlist the use of social media then these service providers have to find a way to manage security beyond their current methods.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

AMD’s New Buzz Word “Surround Computing”

Mark Papermaster, the IBM executive who was named AMD’s chief technology officer last year, prompted discussion on Tuesday at the Hot Chips conference in Silicon Valley to promote “surround computing” a concept that will usher in an era where the intelligence delivered through microprocessors becomes a built-in functionality that integrates into all devices around us.

Papermaster described a world in which natural user interfaces such as gestures, fingerprints and facial recognition replace keyboards, touchscreens and mice for interactive experiences on tablets and other devices. That integration can help users connect in a more natural way with their hardware but ultimately would require more power for servers to keep up with the increased flow of information being processed.

While everyone is always intrigued with the hologram keyboard that is often used in movies or the slick hand movements that pull up video and content, like in the minority report, the reality is that we are a few years away from that and probably a decade away before it becomes something you would see in a home.

I enjoy the competition that AMD and Intel have built over the last decade, and chip performance has certainly improved over that time, but the amount of data and processing needed to deliver these types of enhancements may make the financial cost somewhat impractical, not to mention the peripheral devices needed to interact with the user and the machine. Speech recognition programs have been around for years and despite the best technical minds and improved processing speed, they still do not function at the level that we have come to accept in our movies.

Perhaps the most comical example come from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, when Scotty is trying to build the glass needed to contain the water to transport the whale and he starts off by saying, “computer”, and the owner looks at him and points to the mouse and he picks it up and says “computer”. The irony is that we have envisioned computer interactive designs for over 50 years, so I guess another decade is probably to be expected, at least the chip manufactures are thinking along the next generation of productivity.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

VMware’s New vCloud 5.1 Makes Data Centers Virtual

According to VMware, VMware vCloud® Director™ (vCloud Director) orchestrates the provisioning of software-defined datacenter services, to deliver complete virtual datacenters for easy consumption in minutes. Software-defined datacenter services and virtual datacenters fundamentally simplify infrastructure provisioning and enable IT to move at the speed of business.

So what are you really getting? Conceptually this is a very neat package of utilizing data center services (compute, storage, networking, security and availability) into a software on-demand construct.. The vCloud Suite 5.1 is built on an updated version of VMware vSphere 5.1 and includes over 100 enhancements.

What appears promising about this design is the ability to manage flow resources across systems and workloads, along with privatizing the cloud infrastructure and securing the network. However there are skeptics. In an interview with TechNewsWorld, John Vincenzo, vice president of marketing at Embrane stated that this is "basically a small evolution of the classical virtual appliance approach, there's no scale-out architecture, with no elasticity."

The next round of designs will need to incorporate the ability to increase demand as needed (including interoperability with different hardware architecture), reduce demand as needed and park applications when necessary. The software appears to be headed in the right direction and should foster some strong innovation on the data center management front.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

zEnterprise EC12 - IBM’s Mainframe Built For The Cloud

IBM announced today that they are releasing zEnterprise EC12, a Highly Secure System for Cloud Computing and Enterprise Data. According to their press release the new mainframe will provide:

· New, cutting-edge System z® capabilities for security and analytics dramatically boost cloud performance with help from IBM Research innovations.

· zEC12 offers 25% more performance per core, over 100 configurable cores and 50% more total capacity than its predecessor.

· Over $1 billion in IBM R&D investment and collaborative client input on today's enterprise system challenges

In addition, zEC12 includes a state-of-the-art, tamper-resistant cryptographic co-processor called Crypto Express4S that provides privacy for transactions and sensitive data. Crypto Express4S includes new hardware and software developed with IBM Research to help meet stringent security requirements for various industries and geographies. According to IBM, it can be configured to provide support for high quality digital signatures used with applications for Smart passports, national ID cards and online legal proceedings, replacing handwritten signatures as directed by the EU and the public sector.

Traditionally mainframes have been used in the financial sector where millions of transactions are processed and have a high need for security, but I would expect adoption in the healthcare area as well, especially since the US has mandated that patient records move to an electronic status by 2014 with penalties starting in 2015.

Due to the cost (between 1 million and 10 million dollars), I do not expe small organizations to move quickly, but I would expect the larger organizations to adopt the technology and implement IBM;s solution. Being the only commercial server to achieve Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 5+ security classification I think IBM has found a way to increase Mainframe adoption.

I would not be surprised to see the reduction of paper processes in a more expedited time frame. The good news is that this could very well spark new jobs and new technologies that have been unobtainable in the past.

IBM’s Mainframe sales account for only 4% of their overall sales, but peripheral sales for the Mainframe account for 25% of their total sales and deliver substantial margin to the bottom line, estimated to be. more than 40 percent of its profits, according to A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

The Patent Verdict Is In - $1 Billion for Apple

After just three days of deliberation, the nine jurors assigned to the Apple/Samsung Patent infringement case answered all 700 questions and returned with a verdict in favor of Apple, and awarding them more than $1 billion dollars in damages. For the most part the financial impact to Samsung, one of the world’s largest electronics manufactures is minimal, but the impact to how smartphones are built in the future could be dramatic.

In what was covered with much less detail, a similar suit was being argued in South Korea, In that case, the court ruled that Apple and Samsung both infringed on each other’s patents and awarded damages to both parties, $22,000 to Apple and $35,000 to Samsung, far less than the 1 billion awarded to Apple in the US.

There is clearly a lot to be said for home court advantage, while South Korea recognized both companies were in violation of patents, the advantage went to Samsung, in the US however, Samsung was the clear loser, not only did the jury find in favor of Apple, but the did not feel that Apple in any way violated Samsung’s patents.

It is interesting how two cases being argued with virtually the same data have two entirely different outcomes. Currently phones and tablets that are on the market have not been pulled off shelves and no injunction has been granted, although experts are predicting that Apple will ask for an injunction on all devices that currently violate the patents, this could have a major impact for Samsung and for consumers, especially since three smartphones are sold to every iPhone. Samsung is expected to ask to have the verdict overturned and if that fails appeal the verdict to a higher court.

There are a few things that will be interesting to see as this dilemma unfolds. There are those that believe that patents, like the ones Apple has, stifles innovation, meaning that the organization will rely on what it has already built and continue to offer that to the marketplace. In this way, the organization remains status quo. Others will argue that it will force Samsung and others to become more innovative and find ways around the patents which will ultimately lead to innovation. Of course, if Samsung licenses the technology from Apple, than we probably will not see that new innovation.

Even if Samsung takes the innovative path to compete with Apple, the reality is that it will take time, time to develop, review, test and ultimately distribute the product, in the meantime the consumer receives less choices, demand goes up while supply goes down, a great mix for increased prices.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Tim Cook Apple’s Savior or downfall?

Tim Cool assumed Apple’s top position a year ago and based on that news the stock price dropped, as of today it is not up more than 44 percent from where it was. On the surface this look great and Apple appears to be driving towards long term success. However (and there is always a however), product development takes more than a year at most companies and Apple is no exception. The products that are driving Apple are still the brain child of Steve Jobs. The real question is where will Apple be next year.

Back in April, Forrester CEO George Colony, wrote in his blog post that Apple will decline in the post Steve Jobs era. Colony also believes that Apple lost quite a bit when Steve Jobs left, “When Steve Jobs departed, he took three things with him: 1) singular charismatic leadership that bound the company together and elicited extraordinary performance from its people; 2) the ability to take big risks, and 3) an unparalleled ability to envision and design products.”

There is also heavy criticism regarding the advertising efforts that Apple is moving forward with, the addition of celebrities versus the traditional imagery that Apple products used to invoke seems to have hit a discord with potential buyers. While not scientific, the belief is that Apple is now becoming just one of the products versus a way to express your own identity and all of their advertising is beginning to lean towards that shift.
In addition, Apple and Samsung are embattled in a patent case around Samsung’s HTC smartphone. The outcome will have a substantial impact on both companies and depending on the verdict may highlight Cook’s legacy one way or the other.

Finally, Apple is also dealing with several issues around their retail stores. First reported by Gizmodo, Apple’s Dallas flagship store has been doing some pretty horrible things to customers including erasing data and breaking components that worked when they were brought in. The story was also further confirmed by 9TO5Mac.

Where will Apple be in 12 months from now? Well if I knew that I would play the stock market, but what I can say is that without continual innovation and strong leadership, Apple will not be the same company it was two years ago.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

FCC Report Finds 19 Million Americans Do Not Have High-Speed Internet Access

According to the Federal Communications Commission's Eighth Broadband Progress Report  there are still 19 million Americans (6% of the US population) who lack access to high-speed Internet. Congress in Section 706 the Telecommunications Act of 1996 requires the FCC to report annually on whether broadband “is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.”

The FCC believes that we are in an era when broadband is essential to innovation, jobs, and global competitiveness, the Report concludes that the FCC – and the nation – must continue to address obstacles impeding universal broadband deployment and availability. In addition, the report states that billions have been invested by the communications industry in broadband deployment, including next-generation wired and wireless services, including:

• Expansion of networks technically capable of 100 megabit-plus speeds to over 80 percent of the population through cable’s DOCSIS 3.0 rollout

• World-leading LTE deployment by mobile operators

• Sweeping reforms by the FCC to its universal service programs, including the new Connect America Fund for broadband deployment, Mobility Fund, and the Lifeline program for low-income Americans

• Action under the FCC’s Broadband Acceleration Initiative to reduce the cost and time required for deployment

• Numerous steps to expand availability of wireless spectrum for broadband 

With this said, many rural and tribal areas still lack access to high speed service. The report also indicated that the US is behind many other industrial countries in the speed and coverage of high speed Internet service. With that said, I will admit I would never go back to dial up - I can even remember when I was overly excited to get the USR upgrade patch to bring my 28.8k modem up to 33.6k, but on the flip side the communications act has a cost.

My cable bill has steadily increased, I now pay more for cable than I ever imagined, yes I love my high speed service, but at what cost is it being delivered? In NJ we spent billions laying fiber optic cabling over a decade ago, someone had to pay for it, nothing in this world is free. So while the report provides great insight to our current state, my experience has been that the last part of a project of this magnitude is typically the most expensive and difficult.

In my days of Six Sigma, getting to 99.9% was much easier and less costly than moving to 99.99%. This is a pure statistical metric, in order to move to the next 9, you have to endure considerable effort and this effort has a substantial cost, so while we are making progress, I would expect the cost to complete the additional 6% to be a heavy burden.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Are Software Patents Stifling Innovation?

Pablo Chavez, Google's public policy director, spoke at the Technology Policy Institute’s conference this week and stated, "One thing that we are very seriously taking a look at is the question of software patents, and whether in fact the patent system as it currently exists is the right system to incent innovation and really promote consumer-friendly policies".

Having been in the messaging business for 15 years I can attest to the impact and cost of patent infringements. Companies have been known to collect patents (referred to as patent trolls) and derive business models by going after companies that have similar designs to their patents. The problem that often occurs is that it becomes less costly to settle than to argue your case in court. This then adds credibility to the patents, even if they are not an exact match.

Substantial monies are invested in bringing claims and defending patent positions, monies that could be used for new jobs, innovation, product improvements and increased stakeholder value. No one benefits from the patent lawsuits, while a company may win money in a settlement, the time and effort required to prove the case and bring experts in to testify, takes away from the filing company’s corporate direction and takes away substantial resources from the company being sued. In the end we as consumers pay the price with increased costs of services, fewer jobs and less innovation.

The challenge becomes how to protect a company’s investment without impeding innovation. Twitter announced in April a new patent credo and moved more control of the patents to their employees. Twitter published a draft of the Innovator’s Patent Agreement which basically allows the inventor to maintain control over their patents, and Twitter agrees not to use the patents to file offensive lawsuits designed to block technology development at other firms without permission of the inventor. I find this an interesting approach.

I personally have a software patent filed on behalf of my former company, and in fact the patent design is believed to be infringed by another company who built an app for a HP printing device. So I have seen firsthand how ideas and concepts can be created and used and end up in litigation. Because of the litigation between the two companies, I cannot really comment on my opinion on this particular patent, but I can say in general, as a society if we want our technology to become more innovative and grow our domestic organizations, than we need to figure out a new process for software patents.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Amazon’s ‘Elastic Beanstalk’ Now Supports Python

Amazon recently announced that AWS Elastic Beanstalk now supports Python, and seamless database integration. If you’re not familiar with Elastic Beanstalk, Elastic Beanstalk is a quick and simple way to deploy applications to AWS. By using the AWS Management Console, Git deployment, or an integrated development environment (IDE) such as Eclipse or Visual Studio to upload your application, Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring. Within minutes, your application will be ready to use without any infrastructure or resource configuration work on your part.

Amazon claims it is now the easiest way to deploy and manage scalable PHP, Java, .NET, and Python applications on AWS. You simply upload your application, and Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles all of the details associated with deployment including provisioning of Amazon EC2 instances, load balancing, auto scaling, and application health monitoring.

Integration with Amazon Rational Database Service (RDS)

Amazon RDS makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud, making it a practical fit for scalable web applications running on Elastic Beanstalk. If your application requires a relational database, Elastic Beanstalk can create an Amazon RDS database instance to use with your application. The RDS database instance is automatically configured to communicate with the Amazon EC2 instances running your application. Once the RDS database instance is provisioned, you can retrieve information about the database from your application using environment variables:

Ability to Customize your Python Environment

 You can also customize the Python runtime for Elastic Beanstalk using a set of declarative text files within your application. If your application contains a requirements.txt in its top level directory, Elastic Beanstalk will automatically install the dependencies using pip. Elastic Beanstalk is also introducing a new configuration mechanism that allows you to install packages from yum, run setup scripts, and set environment variables. You simply create a “.ebextensions” directory inside your application and add a “python.config” file in it. Elastic Beanstalk loads this configuration file and installs the yum packages, runs any scripts, and then sets environment variables.

For more information about using Python and Elastic Beanstalk, visit the Developer Guide.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Progressive Settles Claim Amid Social Media Pressure

While the story you are about to read is very tragic and my heart goes out to the family for what they have had to endure, it is another example of how Social Media has evolved in our society. Matt Fisher recently wrote a blog article titled “My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer In Court”. On June 19, 2010, Katie Fisher was driving in Baltimore when her car was struck by another car and she was killed. The other driver had run a red light and hit her car as she crossed the intersection on the green light.

The driver was under-insured, but Nationwide Insurance settled for the maximum amount of their client’s policy. Ms. Fisher was insured by Progressive and had additional coverage to protect her against uninsured/under insured motorists. Due to the outstanding bills such as student loans, the additional monies were needed to settle Ms. Fisher’s obligation. In Mr. Fisher’s article he goes on to outline that Progressive refused to honor their insurance policy and that due to legal restrictions in Maryland, his parent’s only recourse was to sue the driver for negligence. From there they could try to leverage that verdict to have Progressive honor their policy.

Needless to say, Progressive finally settled the lawsuit, but not after a tremendous amount of frustration and pain for the Fisher family and the driver of the other car, who has to live with the outcome of the accident every day. The problem here is that Progressive only settled when their reputation was being challenged via Social Media outlets. The blog article went viral and Progressive was flooded with complaints on their Facebook page. Had this recourse not been available to Mr. Fisher, one would wonder if Progressive would have ever settled.

This is the third article that has touched on the power of Social Media as it relates to companies (Amazon and Apple Make Changes Amid Recent Hacking and Where Will We Draw the Line With Social Media? ). Companies can pretend that their on-line reputation has little to do with their business (especially in the case of progressive who floods the air waves with commercials), but ultimately, stories that touch the heart or enrage our morality will make or break a company. Companies need to be aware of what is being said about them on line, they need to have a better understanding of what issues could become volatile and manage these issues accordingly. When you think about it, all Progressive had to do was the right thing and this would have been a positive story rather than a negative campaign.

I do not think it is hard for a company to manage their on line reputation if you are doing the right thing for your customers, and if you are not doing the right thing, you will probably get stung by the Social Media Buzz.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

New Meaning to Cloud Update

Last week NASA updated the Mars rover, Curiosity. At a distance of 160 million miles, this was no small feat. Each command took approximately 14 minutes to transmit and 14 minutes to receive a response (and we all think Windows updates take time). The rover was designed to process updates as part of the mission, in fact NASA officials claim that the rover has a small storage space for the OS and needed to be updated once it had landed. The total update took 4 days as NASA wanted to make sure Curiosity did not become the proverbial brick that we have seen once you mess up a BIOS update.

While this is an amazing accomplishment, what I take away from this is the fact that with passion, all things become possible. I see this as a way to overcome an obstacle, with innovation and ingenuity driven by passion, NASA was able to overcome Curiosity’s limitations. As Product Managers, we often face the same conflicts. I have always felt that Product Management is one of the hardest jobs because you have virtually every department asking you for enhancements and yet none of the teams directly report to you. I am sure we have all had at least one department heads go to your manager and escalate an item that they feel has to be in the next release – I used to say that secretly, everyone wanted to be a Product Manager.

In my experience, most Product Managers only look at the end user as the customer, but in reality, Product Management has many customers, this includes Customer Care – who will tell you what they need to service the clients, Sales – who will tell you what they need to sell the product, Operations – who will tell you what the product needs to do to keep running efficiently, Accounting – who will tell you what they need to create an invoice for the service, Development – who wants to work on new and exciting technology and ultimately the end user – who pays the bills. The fact is that each and every group is important and finding a way to balance their requests and developing a road map that meets all of their needs is a challenge.

With that said, when you look at what it takes to do a software upgrade 160 million miles from the point of origin, you have to wonder how any problem could appear as large as it initially did. Great Product Managers find a way to overcome obstacles, maintain relationships with key stake holders and never forget that each constituent has a desire to make the product and customer experience better.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Windows 8 – Time to Learn a New OS

Microsoft Windows has come a long way since the days of Win 3.1, they have had good success with Windows NT, XP and Windows 7, but have also missed the boat a few times, who could ever forget Millennium. We are now headed towards a new learning curve, for those of you who appreciated the change from Office 2003 to Office 2007, this will be on the same level. There is no doubt that people who have never used a computer before will gravitate to the Windows 8 interface, my experience with the beta version has been as one would expect. The general design is very easy to navigate, assuming you know nothing of previous Operating Systems. If you do, you will be challenged to find the functions that you have spent the last few years learning.

Windows 8 promises more integration with Touch Screens and if you purchase new computers frequently, you will probably like this feature. My experience however is that most people only buy a new PC when theirs is beyond repair, so if you are like the rest of us, it will be a while before you get the full advantage of Windows 8. The goal from Microsoft was to build the OS for the PC/Tablet to integrate with all of the gadgets we have become accustomed to, watching Netflix, reading an online book, playing Angry Birds or creating a spread sheet. Windows 8 is also a much lighter OS, it boots quickly and even functions well on older machines.

If I use my wife as the gauge – I installed the Windows 8 beta version on her laptop – then I would expect a few challenges for most users. She has asked me at least a dozen times where her pictures are stored as they never seem to show up where she expects them and it took her a few days to figure out the new navigation icons. But despite a few complications, Windows 8 will move us closer to the centralized OS that can run a house hold that is connected to a network.

One other critical component is that Microsoft is making Windows 8 very affordable, they recently announced on their blog that an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro (from any version of XP or later) would be just $39.99.  I have to show my age here as I was one of the geeks that waited until Midnight at Comp USA (yes they were brick and mortar before Tiger Direct bought their name) to purchase Windows 95 – the OS that was going to change everything. Microsoft certainly knows how to keep our lives on the PC interesting.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Kaspersky Labs Seeks Help From the Community to Crack Gauss

Kaspersky Labs is having a difficult time cracking the encrypted payload that is being delivered by the Gauss malware toolkit. The payload is delivered to machines via an infected USB stick that uses the .lnk exploit to execute the malicious activity. In addition to the encrypted payload, two other files that also contain encrypted sections are delivered to the machine; Kaspersky has been unable to crack these files. “We are asking anyone interested in cryptology, numerology and mathematics to join us in solving the mystery and extracting the hidden payload,” the researchers write in a blog post published Tuesday.

The spyware, dubbed Gauss after a name found in one of its main files, has a module that targets bank accounts in order to capture login credentials for accounts at several banks in Lebanon and also targets customers of Citibank and PayPal. Gauss has been distributed in the Middle East for at least 10 months, It was designed to intercept data required to work with banks and to collect information about systems it infects. However, more than 2,500 unique PCS have been infected with Gauss modules in 25 countries around the world. These include the United States and Germany. Kaspersky Labs suspects that the infections could be much more widespread.

What concerns Kaspersky the most though is the fact that the malware has a mysterious payload, designated resource “100,” which Kaspersky fears could be designed to cause some sort of destruction against critical infrastructure. “The [encrypted] resource section is big enough to contain a Stuxnet-like SCADA targeted attack code and all the precautions used by the authors indicate that the target is indeed high profile,” Kaspersky writes in its blog post.

The genesis of Gauss appears to come from the Flame Malware that was identified in May, This platform has several similarities to Flame, Kaspersky said."There's no doubt Gauss comes from the same factory which produced Flame," Roel Schouwenberg, senior researcher at Kaspersky Lab, told TechNewsWorld. "They're built on the same platform." The first known Gauss infections occurred around September, Kaspersky Lab said. The platform's creators have modified different modules several times and changed command server addresses. The command servers went offline in the middle of July, when Kaspersky Lab scientists were examining Gauss.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.

Will OpenStack Change the Face of Cloud Computing?

For those of you who are not familiar with OpenStack, it is a cloud operating system that controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a data center, all managed through a dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a web interface. The OpenStack project got a boost today when Red Hat released a preview version of its own version of the open source cloud software.

The preview version will be distributed to the forum which includes hackers to help identify security holes within the software. While it is not designed for Production use, I do believe that we will see multiple organizations jump on this new model. RackSpace, a major competitor of the Amazon Cloud Service, is already running a production version which is basically the cloud computing version of Linux. The software allows customers to set up their own OpenStack instance to run in their data centers or they can run it on RackSpace’s cloud or utilize other companies such as HP.

The ability to segment and setup an organizational private cloud will become very appealing to the Enterprise who is concerned about co-mingled data or access by cloud employees. The ability to encrypt data that runs on the cloud and access it in a private environment has tremendous value to the security team that has to manage the flow of data leaving the organization. I feel this will become the new cloud model in the next several years. As of right now it will not help consumers, which are a major revenue source for cloud providers, but it will begin to protect data within organizations, especially that data which is sensitive to many consumers.

The history of the OpenStack started at the Rainbow Mansion, and for anyone who is unfamiliar with this house should check out “The Secret History of OpenStack, the Free Cloud Software That’s Changing Everything”. It is a very interesting story that outlines the concepts of today’s greatest minds. The reality is that the cloud is an ever changing term, when I first started in the business, we were outsourcing the business process, then the term "Hosted" became the buzz word, then it evolved into a "Managed Service" and then the think tanks got clever and called it a "Cloud".

Now we will have public and private clouds as the technology becomes available. Expect to hear more about the private cloud that sits on the public domain, I predict it will become the future for the vast majority of enterprises. I would envision sections of applications (like salesforce.com) to become available via the private cloud. The challenge of course will be how to manage the co-mingled data that is contained in the database. But that is just a technical challenge and one that I do not think will take too long to figure out.

Frank Toscano is a 15+ year specialist in cloud based services focusing on Product Management, Marketing and Security within the Cloud. He has worked for EasyLink Services and Premiere Global Services in a global role providing hosted services to Fortune 1000 clients. He is currently seeking employment with a cloud based provider in a senior level Product/Marketing role.