Industry glitterati have stuffed $26 million in the pockets of Shape Security, a start-up promising to deliver a mysterious new kind of web protection that will make it harder and pricier for hackers to ply their trade. The company says the number of large-scale web security incidents has increased exponentially in the past decade. Symantec estimates the overall cybercrime market at $388 billion a year. Last month the FBI took down a single botnet that alone stole over $850 million. Ray Rothrock, a partner in Venrock, the pioneering high-tech venture capital firm started by the Rockefellers and led the new $20 million B round in Shape, said, "The rise of botnets and crimeware-as-a-service have led to an untenable situation where web sites are now cheap to attack and expensive to defend. Shape's technology will alter this balance. It is unlike anything the industry... (more)

Schmidt Tells North Korea to Drop Internet Barriers

When Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt returned to Beijing Thursday from his controversial three-day "private visit" to North Korea he said that he told officials in Pyongyang that they must open the country up to Internet access or it would be "harder for them to catch up economically. We made that alternative very, very clear." The Internet is only accessible to the government, military and universities. Its use is monitored. There's a national intranet with an information portal. The Internet isn't accessible through the country's cellular network although Schmidt said i... (more)

Will Cloud Computing Ever Have Transformational Impact?

Gartner has been predicting for last five years that cloud computing will have a transformational impact in next 2 to 5 year! So, it is a good time to step back and ask ourselves… …will cloud computing ever have transformational impact? I think the answer cannot be given in simple black-and-white term like “Yes” or “No”. Like the answer to most questions on technology choice it is “Depends”. And every depends would lead to a long discussion into various aspects of the problem. But in case of the transformational impact of cloud computing the answer is quiet simple. Impact of C... (more)

How to Get the Security of a Private Cloud Via a Public Cloud Deployment

Recently, McKinsey & Company released an article entitled Protecting information in the cloud which discussed the increased use of cloud computing by enterprises of a variety of sizes and industries and the benefits and risks cloud usage entails. The article recognizes that many organizations are already using cloud applications and realizing the efficiency and cost benefits and, in fact, most are looking to increase their usage of the cloud in 2013 and beyond in both private and public environments. But there are issues that are inhibiting adoption, such as risks associated with... (more)

Seven Modeling Tools to Help Assess Cloud ROI

Network computing posted  a good article on tool for assessing cloud ROI. Check it out below. Posted by David Greenfield, January 08, 2013 Gone are the days when the cloud meant simply a hosted virtual instance or resource on some provider's network. We're seeing all sorts of new variants and twists emerge. I'm not just referring to the use of storage or compute resources or those that allow for elastic computing, such as Amazon's Reserved Instances. We're likely to see industry-specific community clouds emerge. These clouds are built to address the security and compliance needs ... (more)