Data

Google uncovers the secrets behind its search data

In yet another step toward openness/transparency, Google has announced that it will start providing context around how it customizes its search results. As The New York Times reports:

Google uses its best guess about where you are and sometimes the history of what you searched for in an attempt to provide more relevant results. Now a small note in the upper-right-hand corner of the results pages will give some clue that this is happening....In another nice twist, that page has a link to the search results that would have been shown if Google didn't take into account … Read more

DataCase turns iPhone into wireless storage device

OK, we know you're probably iPhone-apped out by now, but a seemingly promising program called DataCase is worth a mention. It turns your iPhone (or iPod Touch) into a handheld wireless drive, meaning you should be able to peek at your PowerPoint document, reread your Word Document, review a PDF, or check your Excel spreadsheet when and where you want, with no upload program or server configuration necessary.

The program works directly with Finder and Bonjour to let you save all manner of files by dragging and dropping. PCs and Linux are also supported.

The application is currently in … Read more

Sophos to offer $340 million takeover bid for German rival

Sophos, a U.S. provider of Internet security software, said Monday it has offered $340 million to buy Utimaco Safeware AG, a German software specialist in the field of data loss and encryption.

The Boston-based Sophos said Monday that it plans to launch a takeover bid for the company, offering $23.11 for all outstanding Utimaco shares, or a 92 percent premium on the company's latest closing price. To that end, the company also said it entered into an agreement with Investcorp Technology Partners, the largest shareholder of Utimaco, to acquire its 24.99 percent stake in Utimaco for … Read more

Open source + open data = Open cloud

It used to be taken for granted that the web was and always would be open. That assumption has increasingly come under fire as cloud computing has set up walled gardens for data and services...much as the desktop has done.

Tim O'Reilly addressed the threat of closed clouds and closed mobile devices to access the web in his keynote at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention.

Tim seemed to have lost interest in open source over the past few years, his interest instead turning to Web 2.0 (though he continued to recognize the need for an upgrade to the way we think of open source in terms of licenses instead of services). But somehow, somewhere, Tim re-discovered the importance of open source, this time in keeping Web 2.0 from turning into Manacle 2.0.

I'm not sure that you ever truly left, Tim, but this call to arms is timely and welcome. In his keynote, Tim said:… Read more

Brocade to acquire Foundry Networks

Brocade announced it plans to acquire Foundry Networks, in a deal valued at approximately $3 billion.

Under the agreement, Brocade will pay a combination of $18.50 of cash plus 0.0907 shares of Brocade common stock in exchange for each share of Foundry common stock, for a total value of $19.25 per share, the two companies said in a joint press release issued Monday.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Foundry is a 12-year-old company that does enterprise and service provider switching and routing. Brocade's CEO praised it as "strong and well-respected" in their industry, during a … Read more

ERM: The forgotten data security space

With information technology, you can look at problems and solutions in lots of different ways. For end users and academics, this can lead to a lot of experimentation, skunk works projects, and trial-and-error. But that is not the case when it comes to technology vendors. Start-ups also see lots of ways to solve problems, but they are bound by business plans, directors, and funding to pick their battles and build focused solutions. Some make the right choice and get lucky, some don't.

As an example, I offer two different solution types for data security: Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and … Read more

Hitachi announcement adds momentum to hard drive encryption

Last week, Hitachi announced its 7K1000, a 3.5-inch terabyte drive for PCs that also offers full-disk encryption (FDE). This drive joins a growing number of encrypting drives from Hitachi as well as Fujitsu and Seagate. Certainly, Samsung and Western Digital can't be far behind.

In my view, Hitachi's announcement is across the industry for several reasons:

1. New corporate laptop purchases will likely contain encrypting drives. Now that laptop vendors like Acer, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard have multiple disk drive suppliers to choose from, they are far more likely to build and sell more laptops with encrypting drives. … Read more

IT managers worried about data leaks, survey shows

IT managers are almost as worried about what sensitive corporate data is leaking out of the company as they are about malware infections from the Web, according to a new survey.

Nearly 40 percent of IT staff at mid to large companies in North America said they believed that unintentional leaks by employees are a bigger threat to the security of their data than spyware or malicious software, according to a survey of 109 IT decision makers conducted over the Web last month by Osterman Research for FaceTime, a company that sells tools that allow companies to easily monitor and … Read more

Pioneer claims 400GB, Blu-ray-like disc

Got a big archiving project you've been itching to do? Pioneer's latest development could help you keep all your data in one nice, little circular package.

The Japanese electronics maker has been working on an optical disc, which, like Blu-ray, can store 25GB of data in a single layer. But Pioneer says it's one-upped the high-definition format to the sixteenth degree. The company announced today that it has a single disc that contains 16 layers of storage, at 25GB each. That adds up to 400GB of data capable of being stored on a single disc.

Blu-ray comes … Read more