ITEC

Slates patch for March 30; flaw can't be used in upcoming Pwn2Own hack contest

Computerworld - Mozilla yesterday confirmed a critical vulnerability in the newest version of Firefox, and said it would plug the hole by the end of the month.
Although the patch won't be added to Firefox before next week's Pwn2Own browser hacking challenge, researchers won't be allowed to use the flaw, according to the contest's organizer.
"The vulnerability was determined to be critical and could result in remote code execution by an attacker," Mozilla acknowledged in a post to its security blog late Thursday. "The vulnerability has been patched by developers and we are currently undergoing quality assurance testing for the fix."
Firefox 3.6, which Mozilla launched in January, is affected, Mozilla said, adding that it would be patched in version 3.6.2, currently slated to ship on March 30.
The bug was disclosed by Russian researcher Evgeny Legerov a month ago in a message posted on a forum hosted by Immunity, the Miami Beach, Fla. developer best known for its Canvas penetration testing framework. Legerov works for Moscow-based Intevydis, which produces the VulnDisco add-on for Canvas.

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As IT infrastructures become increasingly converged and components increasingly interdependent, IT admins are still not factoring in the collateral impact of individual changes to the IT environment, said one exec.
Joe Wolke, director of IT strategy for Skokie, Ill.-based IT consulting firm Forsythe Solutions Group said that while technology trends like virtualization, storage consolidation, cloud computing and hosted applications serve to streamline IT functions, they do change the traditional IT equation.

"In many ways they are making infrastructure less complex, but are making the model for identifying direct costs much more complex," said Wolke.
Changes to the IT environment like adding a new application, business unit or geographic location will have a greater impact than is immediately observable. The foundational issue of running IT as a business, said Wolke, is ensuring costs are transparent and comprehensible to users.

Wolke said it's critical to align the lifecycle of a new application with that of the associated physical assets. This means recognizing that storage and servers required for the application may not have the same lifespan, so all costs must be accounted for down the road.

 

 

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Computerworld - Given the growth of social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter, and the increasing use of collaboration tools such as Microsoft SharePoint, you may begin to wonder whether e-mail's day in the sun is coming to an end.

Once the primary way we communicated electronically, e-mail has begun to seem less central to our daily lives. It feels as if a tipping point has been reached. Businesses recognize the power of social networking sites to attract customers, build buzz and perform sophisticated research, and they see that collaboration tools can allow employees to work with one another and with people outside the company.

E-mail, it seems, is no longer the center of the universe. So is it time to say goodbye to it as the core of business and personal communication? Will e-mail go the way of the physically mailed letter -- useful for certain purposes, but not the primary way that people keep in touch and collaborate?

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Google has apparently decided that the time to hold its punches has past, as it unveils its Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange tool. As its name implies, the server-based tool will help Exchange users migrate their company's email, calendar and contact details from their server or hosted Exchange account into the Google Clouds.

The tool is free to Premier subscribers of its Google Apps or Education subscribers, and will work with both Exchange 2003 and 2007. Google says that migration is a simple four-step process that starts with entering the credentials for your Exchange server and Google Apps account. There is ample flexibility to move only selected users, or transfer the data across in phases.

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In an interview with Network World, Hitachi Data Systems' CTO, Hu Yoshida noted that solid state disks (SSD) may ultimately replace the traditional Winchester (aka mechanical) disk drive. Of course, this much is pretty obvious to anyone who's ever tried a recent generation of solid state disks; the performance boost afforded by an SSD leaves alternative upgrades options such as upping the RAM or even swapping the processor pretty much in the dust.

 

Still, hearing it from an enterprise storage solutions maker is quite another matter entirely. Of course, Yoshida also rightly pointed out that the lifespan of 100,000 writes that SLC flash memory currently yields in current enterprise storage products "may not be adequate" to make flash a complete replacement for hard disks at this stage.

 

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As an IT Manager you face the daunting task to meeting all of your company's IT needs in a challenged economy. Hiring additional staff is one way to approach the issue, but finding and paying for qualified staff takes time and money, which are the resources you are limited on in the first place. Quite the "Catch 22." Not to mention that all you may really need is just a little extra help here and there - not another full-time or even part-time employee.

Another approach is forming a partnership with an organization that has the resources you need on standby. In this scenario, you are only paying for help when you need it, and you know you are covered no matter what issue arises. There are no salaries, benefits, etc. to worry about. You also don't have to worry if the person you would have otherwise hired may have all of the skills for the multitude of issues he or she may face. You will have a team of professionals at your disposal.

DoubleRadius Technical Solutions (DRTS) meets this need for small and mid-size businesses, offering solutions for:

For more information, email Steve Van Tol at [email protected] or call 704-927-6092.
Or visit: techsolutions.doubleradius.com

 

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Microsoft's new desktop virtualization initiatives announced yesterday are a long-anticipated move to make desktop and application virtualization easier and cheaper for enterprises. But it's also part of a broader Microsoft strategy to capture market share from virtualization arch-rival VMware.

 

Desktop virtualization is still a nascent technology, but it does offer the kind of flexibility and ROI that enterprises are looking for, especially ones that are migrating to Windows 7 and are worried about application incompatibility. Microsoft's desktop virtualization model, including VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure), promises to rein in desktop costs, improve security and management and speed up the delivery of new applications.

One key part of the sweeping announcements, covered in an hour-long Webcast, is a simpler and cheaper model for licensing Windows in a virtual desktop environment. Specifically, on July 1, Software Assurance customers will no longer have to buy a separate license to access Windows via a VDI.

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Microsoft will discontinue development of Windows Essential Business Server (EBS) as of June 30, the company announced via a blog.

 

The blog calls the elimination of this package of integrated Microsoft back-office programs a move to "streamline [Microsoft's] server product portfolio."

"[M]idsize businesses are rapidly turning to technologies such as ... virtualization and cloud computing as a means to cut costs, improve efficiency, and increase competitiveness," the post stated. "Those capabilities are already available through other offerings, including Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft System Center and the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite."

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The IT industry is about to go through a metamorphosis in the coming decade, and technicians and engineers need to be prepared.  Research is showing a 75% reduction in the work force needed in the next decade, and a 50% reduction in the next five years for the traditional company IT staff. This will occur at all levels, and the numbers presented will bear this out.

Despite the recession, IT staffing added 40,000 jobs during the worst quarter of the recession in 2009. It is expected to continue to grow in the short term. So, how do we get from a growth industry to one where massive amounts of people will be out of work?

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The pendulum is moving toward IT consolidation as CIOs try to save money and gain efficiencies. But it's possible to go too far.

Computerworld - When the economy plummeted at the end of 2008, the Western U.S. branch of The Salvation Army was ahead of the cost-cutting game. CIO Clarence White had centralized the IT organization a year or two earlier, and he had consolidated the database and storage servers from the business units into a single data center in Long Beach, Calif.

The move wasn't aimed at cutting costs, but "the timing was good," White says. It reduced the charitable organization's technology footprint, encouraged more virtualization and lowered maintenance and power costs. "It was an unanticipated benefit," he says. "We looked like geniuses."

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