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Jakarta Declaration Calls on Governments to Recognize Legitimacy of Encryption – CircleID

May 5, 2017 | Author: admin

Today in Indonesia, media leaders gathered at UNESCO's World Press Freedom Day event issued the "Jakarta Declaration" calling on governments of the world to recognize the importance of a free and independent media in creating "peaceful, just and inclusive societies". The declaration calls on governments to take steps to support the freedom of the press, and, in the midst of the many actions was this statement:

34. Recognise the legitimacy of the use of encryption and anonymisation technologies;

As a long-time advocate for the widespread usage of encryption to protect our personal communication, I was extremely pleased to see this statement included in the declaration.

My colleague Constance Bommelaer wrote in detail yesterday about WHY encryption is so critical for journalists:

The future of the free press is at risk: encryption is part of the solution

She ends the piece with this call to action:

Governments have a role too. We invite them to adopt the SecureTheInternet principles and to support strong encryption, not only to ensure the safety of journalists, but also as a technology that already allows us to do our banking, conduct local and global business, run our power grids, operate communications networks, and do almost everything else.

As we celebrate World Press Freedom Day, we must remember that journalists and their sources are taking enormous risks right now in making sure crucial stories get told.

In today's environment, where trust in online information is at an all-time low, we need free, safe and independent journalists more than ever. We all have a role to play, and encryption is one step to take us there.

We all DO have a role. And encryption is part of how we get there.

I encourage you all to share this news about the Jakarta Declaration; to share the Jakarta Declaration document itself; to learn more about encryption; and to help people understand why encryption is critical for securing our digital economy!

By Dan York, Author and Speaker on Internet technologies - and on staff of Internet Society. Dan is employed as a Senior Content Strategist with the Internet Society but opinions posted on CircleID are entirely his own. Visit the blog maintained by Dan York here.

Related topics: Policy & Regulation, Privacy, Security

IoT Time Preview: Encryption – IoT Evolution World (blog)

May 5, 2017 | Author: admin

In this weekly series, well be previewing chapters of IoT Time: Evolving Trends in the Internet of Things for you to read in the hopes that youll like it enough to read the whole thing.

IoT Evolution, the leading media brand for the Internet of Things (IoT), has published a book outlining more than 150 of the leading trends in the IoT industry, entitled IoT Time: Evolving Trends in the Internet of Things. The book, written by IoT Evolution Editorial Director, Ken Briodagh, seeks to explore the factors that have shaped the recent past of the developing industry and use those to predict the trends that will drive the next period of growth. Each of the trends is explicated and illustrated with a case study or product review that supports each position.

In this weekly series, well be previewing chapters for you to read in the hopes that youll like enough to read the whole thing. To do just that, for free,click here. Alternatively, theres a paperback version available on Amazon for $14.99.

Chapter 18: Encryption Trend: Education is needed Connected Device Security a Mystery to 61 Percent of Consumers A recent survey of more than 1,000 consumers has illustrated the spread of the IoT among consumers, but it also points out some serious security concerns. The survey by BullGuard, a provider of mobile and internet security, said that about a quarter of consumers were planning to buy IoT devices in the next 12 months. BullGuard found that 58 percent of consumers are very concerned or highly concerned about potential hacking and data theft carried out against their connected devices, and 37 percent have already experienced a security incident or privacy problem. According to the survey, 68 percent of respondents are concerned about security risks like viruses, malware and hackers and 65 percent expressed concern over data collected by device manufacturers being inappropriately used or stolen.

The IoT industry has yet to establish common security standards among devices. Smart device manufacturers tend to adopt their own approach to security while updates to ensure device security are often too technical and complex for consumers to carry out, even those who are technically literate. This study revealed that 24 percent of consumers with advanced technical skills are not confident in their ability to keep their connected devices secure.

These vulnerabilities have been acknowledged by intelligence agencies across the world. In recent testimony to the US Senate, James Clapper, US Director of national intelligence, said, In the future, intelligence services might use the [Internet of Things] for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location trackingor to gain access to networks or user credentials.

Paul Lipman, CEO, BullGuard said, Most of us have been working with internet connected devices such as computers, smartphones and tablets for some time, but the Internet of Things is changing our perception of personal security, for both ourselves and our data. Its not just those who consider themselves technophobes that have these concerns tech savvy users are saying the same.

When asked how they would rate their computer skills, the majority of respondents described themselves as intermediate or advanced. More than 80 percent said they are capable of setting up their own router, yet when asked if they have changed their router password, almost half denied it. A third admitted that they dont know how, and 60 percent do not know how to configure a router to keep a home network secure.

Consumers are clearly not equipped to handle the myriad of security risks presented by connected devices, said Lipman. With devices such as security cameras, alarm systems and door locks now being connected to the internet, physical security is becoming as much of a consideration for consumers as data security. Keeping these devices secure is absolutely imperative.

Trend: Devices are too vulnerable IoT Devices Still Terrible at Security In a recent study, security firm ForeScout has shown that it takes fewer than three minutes to hack many common Enterprise IoT devices. This in-depth analysis shows the dangers posed by enterprise IoT devices, and seems to reveal that most can act as points of entry into critical enterprise networks. This IoT Enterprise Risk Report was based on research by white hat hacker Samy Kamkar.

IoT is here to stay, but the proliferation and ubiquity of these devices in the enterprise is creating a much larger attack surface -- one which offers easily accessible entry points for hackers, said Michael DeCesare, president and CEO, ForeScout Technologies. The solution starts with real-time, continuous visibility and control of devices the instant they connect -- you cannot secure what you cannot see.

Kamkar's research focused on seven common enterprise IoT devices: IP-connected security systems, smart HVAC and energy meters, video conferencing systems and connected printers, among others. According to his observations from a physical test situation and analysis from peer-reviewed industry research, these devices pose significant risk to the enterprise. That risk comes mostly because the majority of them are not built with embedded security. Of the few devices that did have some security protocols, Kamkar said many were operating with dangerously outdated firmware.

One of the vulnerabilities discovered was via a physical hack Kamkar performed, giving him access to an enterprise-grade, network-based security camera. The camera was entirely unmodified and running the latest firmware from the manufacturer, and was still vulnerable and ultimately allowed for the planting of a backdoor entryway that could be controlled outside the network.

Key findings of the report: The identified seven IoT devices can be hacked in as little as three minutes, but can take days or weeks to remediate. Should any of these devices become infected, hackers can plant backdoors to create and launch an automated IoT botnet DDoS attack, much like whats been happening over the last week. Cybercriminals can leverage jamming or spoofing techniques to hack smart enterprise security systems, enabling them to control motion sensors, locks and surveillance equipment. With VoIP phones, exploiting configuration settings to evade authentication can open opportunities for snooping and recording of calls. Via connected HVAC systems and energy meters, hackers can force critical rooms (e.g. server rooms) to overheat critical infrastructure and ultimately cause physical damage.

Thanks to vulnerabilities like the ones revealed here, bad actors are now easily able to use insecure devices to gain access to secure networks, and ultimately other enterprise systems chock full of tasty bank account information, personnel files and proprietary business information.

Trend: Good crypto could be an answer Cryptography Enables Turnkey Security for Connected Devices Developers of IIoT and connected embedded systems can now design in an added level of trust while also bringing their products to market faster, thanks to a recently released product from Maxim Integrated products. With the increase in cyber attacks on critical connected infrastructures, security can no longer be an afterthought in system design. In a recent survey conducted by Electronic Design of 2,200 electronic engineers, 60 percent of respondents said security in their products is very important, and 96 percent think that security will either have the same or more importance for their products.

The Maxim MAXQ1061 is designed with an integrated comprehensive cryptographic toolbox that provides full support for a wide spectrum of security needs, ranging from key generation and storage, to digital signature and encryption up to SSL/TLS/DTLS. It can also support secure boot for most host processors. To withstand extreme industrial environments, the MAXQ1061 is tested to operate from -40 degrees to more than 109 degree Celsius and is available in TSSOP-14.

The MAXQ1061 provides a hardware root of trust; its comprehensive set of cryptographic functions fulfill the key security requirements of the embedded systems of tomorrow, said Christophe Tremlet, Executive Business Manager, Embedded Security, Maxim Integrated. With the MAXQ1061, our customers have a trusted device that will not only guarantee the integrity and authenticity of the system, but also secure communications.

The MAXQ1061 embeds 32KB of user programmable secure EEPROM for storing certificates, public keys, private and secret keys, and arbitrary user data. The EEPROM is managed through a flexible file system, enabling custom security policy enforcement. Its cryptographic algorithms include ECC (up to NIST P-521), ECDSA signature generation and verification, SHA-2 (up to SHA-512) secure hash, AES-128/-256 with support for ECB, CBC, and CCM modes, and MAC digest. The MAXQ1061 also provides a separate hardware AES engine over SPI, supporting AES-GCM and AES-ECB modes, and that can be used to off-load a host processor for fast stream encryption.

The MAXQ1061 provides ideal hardware security to complement our software solution for the Floodgate Defender Appliance allowing customers to easily secure their legacy equipment economically, said Ernie Rudolph, EVP, Icon Labs.

Trend: More breaches means more focus on security Kontron Releases IoT Security Platform Kontron recently released a new hardware and software security platform for IoT environments that uses multi-layer encryption and real-time analytics to secure points across the network and detect rogue devices. A report commissioned by AT&T recently found that in the past two years, vulnerability scans increased in IoT devices by 458 percent. IBMs X-Force, a team of ethical hackers, recently hacked into the building automation system (BAS) of a so-called smart building occupied by a business with multiple offices across the U.S. The vulnerabilities that the team exploited would have given them access to all the BAS units of the company and its branch offices. As a result of their testing, the team came up with a fundamental list of security procedures, like avoiding storage of passwords in clear text form, which BAS operators should follow to reduce the possibility of future breaches.

This kind of competitive security research is critical to the establishment of trust in the IoT industry, and has been a part of the IT security landscape for as long as weve had computers. More of these hackathons and white hat hacker events are needed, and their successes reported. As more vulnerabilities are fixed and patched, new ones become harder to find and the whole industry earns greater consumer and industrial trust. And therefore, it grows.

Edited by Ken Briodagh

Bitcoin surpasses $1500 milestone – MarketWatch

May 5, 2017 | Author: admin

Bitcoin sailed past the $1,500 mark on Thursday, pushing the total value of the digital-currency market above $40 billion for the first time.

Litecoin, another prominent bitcoin rival, advanced 22% to $25, its highest level in more than three years, after Coinbase, one of the most popular digital-currency exchanges in the U.S., enabled trading in the cryptocurrency.

The top 14 most heavily traded digital currencies have all realized astounding gains over the past month as investors who have booked large profits trading bitcoin and rival Ethereum have sought to diversify and increase their chances of cashing in on the next big cryptocurrency rally, according to Chris Dannen, founder of Iterative Instinct a New York-based cryptocurrency venture fund.

Not only are the smaller coins obscure and cheap, but they represent a chance to get those huge returns all over again, Dannen said.

The price of a single bitcoin BTCUSD, +3.59% has more than tripled since the beginning of 2016, when it traded around $450. It peaked at $1,589 on Thursday, according to the CoinDesk bitcoin price index. One ether token traded at $90.95. Dash, the fifth most popular token, traded at $96.

Bitcoins advance has coincided with its growing acceptance by regulators. A law passed by Japanese lawmakers earlier this year that allows financial institutions to participate in the digital-currency market took effect in April.

Also, regulators in Russia and India have signaled their willingness to legalize bitcoin and its peers.

However, bitcoin trading volume in China, once its largest market, plunged after authorities forced the largest exchanges in the country to institute transaction fees and halt withdrawals until they could upgrade their anti-money-laundering systems. New rules require exchanges based in China to verify customers identities.

In March, the Securities and Exchange Commission rejected two proposals that would have led to the creation of bitcoin-focused exchange-traded funds. But the decision elicited only a brief dip in the bitcoin price.

The SEC has since said it would review its March 10 decision that effectively killed the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust. Grayscales proposal to allow its Grayscale Bitcoin Investment Trust to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchanges ETF platform is currently being reviewed, but a decision isnt imminent.

The value of cryptocurrencies, however, have varied dramatically between exchanges, prompting Charles Hayter, the chief executive officer and founder of Cryptocompare, to worry about a possible pullback.

On Bitfinex, one of the largest digital currency exchanges in the world, customers paid a $100 premium as they scrambled to move their assets off its platform. The exchange announced two weeks ago that it would temporarily suspend dollar withdrawals after it was effectively cut off from the financial system.

Cryptos have hit a period of volatility as the markets have become dislocated. Prices on exchanges are showing huge discrepancies in terms of pricing and arbitrage is rife, Hayter said.

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Bitcoin surpasses $1500 milestone - MarketWatch

Bitcoin just soared to a new $1,600 high but the first investor in … – Yahoo Finance

May 5, 2017 | Author: admin

(Jeremy Liew.Getty) Bitcoin has been the top-performing currency in the world in six of the past seven years, climbing from zero to a new high value of about $1,600.

But the cryptocurrency isn't anywhere close to its potential, according to Jeremy Liew, the first investor in Snapchat, and Peter Smith, the CEO and cofounder of Blockchain.

In a presentation sent to Business Insider, the duo laid out their case for bitcoin exploding to $500,000 by 2030.

Their argument is based on increased interest in bitcoin, thanks to:

Remittance transfers, or electronic money transfers to foreign countries, have almost doubled over the past 15 years to 0.76% of gross world product, data from the World Bank shows.

"Expats sending money home have found in bitcoin an inexpensive alternative, and we assume that the percentage of bitcoin-based remittances will sharply increase with greater bitcoin awareness," the two said.

Liew and Smith said increased political uncertainty in the UK, US, and developing nations would help elevate the level of interest in bitcoin.

"We believe bitcoin awareness, high liquidity, ease of transport, and continued market outperformance as geopolitical risks mount will make bitcoin a strong contender for investment at a consumer and investor level," the two said.

Liew and Smith said the percentage of noncash transactions would climb from 15% to 30% in the next 10 years as the world becomes more connected through smartphones.

The global smartphone penetration rate is 63%, and the total number of smartphone users is expected to increase by 1 billion by 2020. The GSMA, a trade body that represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, says 90% of these users will come from developing countries.

This would make it possible for nearly everyone to have a bank in their pocket, and that should provide a boost for bitcoin as well. Liew and Smith say bitcoin could account for 50% of all noncash transactions.

Here are the basic model drivers Liew and Smith used:

Bitcoin's user network grew from 120,000 users in 2013 to 6.5 million users in 2017, or by a factor of about 54, and this could be just the beginning. Growth of that magnitude would mean 400 million users in 2030.

But a lot could go wrong, too. News surrounding bitcoin has been rather negative as of late.

China, which is responsible for nearly 100% of trading in bitcoin, has been cracking down on trading. The three biggest exchanges recently announced a 0.2% fee on all transactions and blocked withdrawals from trading accounts.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission also rejected two bitcoin exchange-traded funds and will rule on another one in the future. It's not expected to be approved.

However, Smith says bitcoin is still in its early stages.

"The SEC's ruling wasn't a surprise to us," he told Business Insider. He said that "getting that sort of approval" could take a long time.

"In the meantime, bitcoin is already simple to buy and hold, and as the asset continues to mature, we'll continue to see an increase in the development and deployment of surrounding products," he said.

(Markets Insider)

And while bitcoin hasn't been granted regulatory approval in the US, it is catching on elsewhere. On April 1, the cryptocurrency became a legal payment method in Japan.

Another threat to its future is developers who are threatening to set up a "hard fork," or alternative marketplace for bitcoin. This would result in the split of into bitcoin and bitcoin unlimited. However, Smith isn't worried.

"Bitcoin has strong economic incentives to prevent this," he said. "If the last two years of healthy contention and debate lead to a conclusion, it's that bitcoin is incredibly resilient and stable. In fact, the bitcoin blockchain has operated for seven-plus years with no downtime, a feat no other back-end system operating at this scale can claim."

But the cryptocurrency sees violent price swings uncommon among the more traditional currencies. Bitcoin rallied 20% in the first week of 2017 before crashing 35% on word that China was cracking down on trading.

The cryptocurrency has regained those losses and is trading up about 67% so far this year.

NOW WATCH: People are outraged by a Pepsi ad starring Kendall Jenner here's how the company responded

Cryptocurrency Prices Explode! Bitcoin at $1600, Ethereum at $100 – Finance Magnates

May 5, 2017 | Author: admin

Cryptocurrency prices appear to beunstoppable today, with the top four blockchain assets now worth over $1 billion each.

The London Summit 2017 is coming, get involved!

It seems much of the surge is from new money pouring into the market. This is evident from the exceptionallyhigh trading volumes, reaching new record total for the entire ecosystem of over $2.2 billion a day. One likely reason for this is that the news of recent all time highs are drawing in more and more new traders attracted to the opportunity.

Bitcoin is now at a record high of $1600, raising 7% since yesterday, giving it a market cap of over $26 billion. Ethereum is now at a record high of $100, raising 16% since yesterday, giving it a market cap of over $9 billion.Ripples XRPis now at a record high of $0.09, raising 40% since yesterday, giving it a market cap of over $3.4billion.Litecoinis now at a record high of $25, raising 20% since yesterday, giving it a market cap of over $1.3 billion.

In fact, most of the other 700+ blockchainassets traded around the world are up significantly today. In total, the combined value of the entire market is now at a record $46 billion. While the speed at which we are seeing the value grow can cause fears of a bubble, the figure is not that unbelievable if we compare it to another online payments solution, Paypal (NASDAQ: PYPL) which has a market cap of $58 billion.

All this actually leads to some contradiction regarding the strength of bitcoin. While the original blockchain is the most valuable and keep setting new records, its cryptocurrency competitors are raising relativelyfaster and bitcoins dominance of the market has fallen to just 57%.

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Cryptocurrency Prices Explode! Bitcoin at $1600, Ethereum at $100 - Finance Magnates

Cryptocurrency Value Growing $1 Billion per day | Hacked: Hacking … – Hacked

May 5, 2017 | Author: admin

Hacked: Hacking Finance Posted by Mati Greenspan on May 4th, 2017. Mati Greenspan

Senior Market Analyst at Etoro.com.

Its been 10 days since the value of all cryptocurrencies crossed $30 Billion for the first time. Today that value stands at more than $41 Billion.

By value, we are referring to the market cap (price per coin times amount of coins in circulation) of more than 700 of the top cryptocurrencies, which are listed at: https://coinmarketcap.com

Not only is the overall value rising but the rate of growth is accelerating as well.

Bitcoin has crossed $1500 for the first time ever and Ethereum is now above $80 again as the tipping point seems only days away.

As these assets are moving rapidly, we at eToro have decided to trade them as a progressive market should be traded. From now on trading in cryptocurrencies will be open during the weekend on our platform.

I say we have a party when the market cap reaches $50 Billion. At the current pace, it should happen by next weekend. Anybody in?

The debate last night was quite a spectacle indeed as the top two candidates compete for 55% of the French population that didnt vote for them in the primaries.

Commentators are referring to this more as a no punches pulled exchange of insults.

You can see the full debate with English translation here:

A snap poll after the debate declared Emanuel Macron as the winner of the debate but as weve seen in the past this type of outcome is not necessarily indicative of how people will vote in the election.

Going into the weekend, we will need to consider not which portion of the population feels that each candidate will win but what percentage of voters from each side will be motivated enough to get off their couches on a rainy Sunday morning and get to the polls.

European stocks are looking rather chipper this morning, all opening with a green gap and breaking the stagnation seen in the US and Asian markets.

In their prepared statement the Fed delivered a substantial surprise to the markets. They dismissed the recent slump in economic growth calling it transitory. They figure that as the year progresses the economy will indeed pick up.

The markets took this as a signal that we are indeed in for two more rate hikes this year and that the next one will be next month.

Market expectations of an interest rate hike on June 14th have gone from under 60% yesterday to above 90% this morning

As interest rate expectations rise, so does the USDollar

As the US Dollar rises commodities fall. Here is gold

Crude oil fell as well, but in all fairness, it was probably reacting more to the inventories announcement than to the Fed. In any case, the technical support line that weve been tracking on the daily chart has been broken big time.

With the US Dollar rising and the commodities falling, the Australian Dollar took a massive blow and is now trading at its the lowest level since January.

Today the President of Australia Malcolm Turnbull will be meeting with President Trump in the United States. If all goes well for Turnbull, perhaps the Aussie will also turn bullish.

Some data coming from England this morning as well as a mysterious emergency announcement from the queen.

Later this evening well hear from Mario Draghi and Governor of the Bank of Canada Poloz, as well as a monetary policy statement from the RBA.

This content is for information and educational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or an investment recommendation.

Past performance is not an indication of future results. All trading carries risk. Only risk capital youre prepared to lose.

Feedback or Requests?

Arguably the most well-known part of technical analysis is the

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Cryptocurrency Value Growing $1 Billion per day | Hacked: Hacking ... - Hacked

Enterprise cloud storage boosted by Oracle Cloud Converged Storage – TechTarget

May 5, 2017 | Author: admin

True hybrid enterprise cloud storage systems promise the best of both on-premises infrastructure and public cloud. They offer the performance, security and governance of local storage necessary for many mission-critical business applications -- not to mention the on-demand elastic scalability and utility economics of public clouds.

But finding true hybrid cloud tools to support critical, enterprise-class, database-driven applications can be difficult. This gaping hole in the market has left enterprise IT pros and business application owners stuck on legacy infrastructures.

However, there has been significant progress. Oracle Cloud Converged Storage, released last month, integrates storage services across its database, enterprise applications, enterprise storage infrastructure and public cloud. Practically, its latest on-premises Oracle ZFS storage arrays internally and organically extend into public Oracle Cloud storage (which is also made up of ZFS storage arrays) -- no gateway integration or third-party software required.

Oracle Cloud Converged Storage looks like what many of us thought hybrid storage was supposed to look like. Yet, no high-performance, enterprise storage system has ever actually delivered a true native hybrid cloud capability. Why haven't other vendors, such as IBM and Dell EMC, offered hybrid cloud storage to leverage their enterprise storage and cloud tools? Those vendors require a hardware or software gateway to move data to the public cloud, unlike Oracle, which doesn't require one.

This failure to deliver what customers really want may be due to internal competition between legacy infrastructure and separately managed cloud divisions. Large storage vendors' revenue and profits have declined the past few years, due to factors such as the cloud, hyper-convergence and more software-defined products, a driving force behind Dell's EMC acquisition.

When enterprises want to evolve legacy architectures into modern hybrid storage, they simply don't want to deal with large bundles or bunches of parts and disparate cloud services that require integration. In a way, this is also about recognizing the market trend of how enterprises seek more convenient converged products in all their IT transformation projects.

True hybrid cloud storage should be simple to own and operate. Simplicity in IT inevitably leads to a lower total cost of ownership and lower risk, whereas complexity always increases implementation overhead, ongoing management costs and lowers service levels. While there are older approaches to hybridized storage services with external cloud gateway products, colocating private storage with public clouds (e.g., NetApp Private Storage) or accelerating data transfer (e.g., Attunity CloudBeam), these all add layers of technology and cause additional burdens to enterprises and database owners and operators.

The Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance is based on Oracle's improved version of ZFS, originally inherited through the acquisition of Sun Microsystems and highly augmented over the years. It provides the high-performance, availability and enterprise features that IT looks for in production data center storage.

This latest release is inherently cloud-enabled, with native (and fully configurable) tiering to the public Oracle Cloud.

The Oracle Cloud is becoming quite popular with application owners and Oracle database administrators who find that it is a natural (and low-risk) public cloud option for Oracle database cloud services. Once storage appliances are brought into an enterprise, many IT storage domain admins find it attractive for general workloads too, offering better price and performance compared to aging legacy network-attached storage systems.

There have also been absolute horror stories from enterprises that have tried to stitch together disparate on-premises storage, cloud gateways and general public cloud providers. The number of complex cross-vendor interactions, the amount of finger-pointing between vendors and the sheer frustration of trying to troubleshoot remote service interactions on a public cloud (with someone who isn't an expert on your exact workload) has kept many from leveraging hybrid cloud opportunities in general, much less for enterprise database-driven applications.

With Oracle Cloud Converged Storage, enterprises need only make one phone call to Oracle support to find and fix issues anywhere in the end-to-end hybrid platform.

Oracle Cloud Converged Storage is relatively low risk because Oracle's cloud storage is actually made up of Oracle ZFS Storage Appliances. So, the same storage that runs on customers' premises, runs in Oracle's public cloud. In fact, Oracle field tests all its beta storage releases in its own cloud first, at great scales that dwarf any individual enterprise (600 petabytes+ and growing fast). Not only does having the same physical storage on both sides of the hybrid cloud connection eliminate a whole raft of potential incompatibility issues, but problems that might arise become much simpler to solve.

For those seeking the benefits of true hybrid cloud storage, it's time to tell your storage vendor that you want fully cloud converged infrastructure, and not some complex amalgamation.

The Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance

Oracle cloud aims to coexist with on premises

A hybrid push from Oracle

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Enterprise cloud storage boosted by Oracle Cloud Converged Storage - TechTarget

Use the cloud to enhance the functions of primary storage – TechTarget

May 5, 2017 | Author: admin

IT managers viewed cloud storage skeptically or as a threat when services such as Amazon Simple Storage Service...

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and Elastic Block Store started appearing a little over a decade ago. As the logic went, the cloud might serve archiving needs, but I sure wouldn't trust placing primary data there due to security, availability and performance concerns.

Today, cloud storage's potential to enhance on-premises deployments is no longer disputable. And while the industry has yet to resolve all the issues that make IT managers uncomfortable, cloud technology security has made solid progress -- notwithstanding the operator error that took down Amazon S3 for a few hours in February.

Maturation has enabled the cloud to become a favorite target for secondary and tertiary data through a growing array of backup, disaster recovery and archiving services. And, increasingly, we're using cloud storage to enhance the functions of primary storage as a tier in the storage hierarchy.

Tiering provides a way to balance storage performance, space and cost requirements of different applications. Data is assigned to different storage classes, based on frequency of access and related factors and then placed on the media that best matches the requirements for that class of storage.

Storage tiering technology has become highly automated, with data placement decisions based on a set of policies, enabling companies to create a hybrid storage architecture, which can span media in the data center and across one or more providers' clouds (see "Evolution of storage tiering technologies").

Recent Taneja Group research suggested more than 60% of IT practitioners either already use or plan to use some form of storage tiering. Two-thirds, meanwhile, have extended storage tiers to the public cloud for at least some critical workloads. The cloud will likely play a larger role in tiering going forward.

Vendors have introduced products that move data out of primary storage as it becomes cold or inactive. Unlike traditional local storage tiering, the newest products permit tiering to the public cloud for greater scalability and more cost-effective use of storage overall.

Most products are automated and allow you to set policies that govern data migration based on frequency of access, age or other factors. All complement and enhance the functions of primary storage.

Products that facilitate the cloud as a separate primary block or file storage tier fall into two major categories: cloud storage gateways and software-defined storage-based offerings.

Cloud storage gateways have come a long way since their 2010 introduction. They've also gone through several naming iterations and may be referred to as cloud controllers, cloud-integrated storage, cloud-caching appliances or other terms.

Originally focused on low-cost cloud backup or archive, storage gateways now address several different primary and secondary storage use cases, including file sync and sharing, collaboration, cloud-based disaster recovery (DR) for recovery in the cloud or on premises, and in-cloud data analytics, in addition to front ends for scale-out NAS in the cloud.

Cloud storage gateways appear as traditional arrays to workloads, but function as high-performance local caches or tiers in front of cloud capacity on the back end, generally as highly scalable object storage. They automatically translate file or block protocols into object protocols. That allows existing apps running on premises to benefit from cloud storage scalability and resiliency without the burden and complexity of integrating legacy storage into the cloud. Gateways come as physical or virtual appliances, and can replace traditional block or file storage systems when storage is built-in.

Cloud storage gateways that handle primary storage commonly include flash-based caching and, in a few cases, primary storage tiers. Though vendor caching algorithms vary, most dynamically store frequently accessed data in flash cache on an ongoing basis, ensuring critical on-premises apps meet performance objectives while translating file or block protocols into object storage in the background. Local pinning prevents the flushing of critical data from the local cache or storage tier.

Look for cloud storage gateways that enable cache to be dynamically resized so it's better tuned to requirements of specific use cases. A cache supporting functions of primary storage might be sized to capture 100% of data stored in the cloud, but you may size your cache that supports archive storage to contain small fractions of cloud data. Some also let you size and assign individual caches to different data sets to support varying performance needs and use cases.

Gateways dedicated to archiving cold or inactive data also benefit primary storage by freeing up on-premises performance and capacity resources so they're used more productively to benefit primary workloads.

Gateway products should also include data reduction such as deduplication or compression to minimize the impact on network performance and to reduce the capacity and cost of data stored in the cloud. Look for products that support deduplication and compression for specific applications, since not all workloads will benefit equally. They should also provide encryption for data at rest and in motion, and support space-efficient snapshots and cloning locally and in the cloud to ensure data's protected. Also ask about directory technologies such as Active Directory or Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) to verify full integration into your current environment.

Check out cloud storage gateway offerings from vendors such as Microsoft (Azure StorSimple) and Dell EMC (CloudArray) to support a variety of primary storage use cases, such as collaboration, databases or virtual machines. If you're looking for a more cost-effective scale-out NAS, look at offerings from Panzura and Nasuni. And to consolidate remote office/branch office infrastructure, consider a gateway appliance from Ctera Networks, which can serve as a front-line array to replace local primary storage in ROBO deployments.

Words of caution: Qualify cloud storage gateways for specific functions of primary storage upfront to ensure they meet latency and IOPS objectives for applications you have in mind. Also, choose a storage gateway that can access multiple cloud providers, both to avoid potential lock-in and enable choosing the provider that best meets the needs of particular workloads.

Cloud storage gateways may allow moving storage to the cloud, but they always assume applications remain running on premises. A new wave of software-defined storage (SDS) products promises to take things a step further by seamlessly transferring primary storage workloads between the data center and the cloud. While these are in early stages of adoption, we at Taneja Group believe they have merit, given the desire to more fully take advantage of the scalability, resilience and agility of the public cloud.

Vendors take two architectural approaches to make this happen: (a) using a distributed, platform-agnostic storage plane to create a single logical pool of storage that spans on premises and cloud and (b) enabling storage volumes to run as a service alongside public cloud compute.

Of course, if you're using object storage in the data center to support primary workloads, and it happens to be compatible with one or more public cloud storage services, such as Amazon S3, then you likely already have an easy way to migrate primary storage workloads into and out of the cloud. Achieving this for primary block and file storage is much tougher, but we expect that'll begin to change by next year.

Because these new emerging technologies primarily focus on nonproduction use cases, such as enabling cloud-based DR or data analytics, and given their relative immaturity, evaluate them thoroughly -- on paper and with hands-on testing -- to determine if and how they can help enhance your primary storage workloads.

Cloud storage that complements or enhances primary storage should meet your needs in each of the following areas:

Accessibility: How broadly accessible must cloud-resident data be, given your primary storage use cases? For example, file sync and sharing and collaboration require access from almost anywhere, whereas analytics workloads may only require accessibility from the data center.

Security: Most cloud gateways and newer software-based hybrid storage products and services encrypt data at rest and in flight, but underlying technologies can vary. Also, verify how you'll manage and control keys -- whether they're generated by you or the vendor -- and ensure they're adequately protected.

Avoid lock-in: Still a real possibility for single-provider platforms such as Amazon Web Services Storage Gateway. You must demand support for multiple public clouds and cost-effective data migration out of the cloud should you decide to switch providers.

Data center to cloud network capabilities: Evaluate network availability and performance requirements, and make sure your network provides the redundancy, connectivity and bandwidth necessary. Check whether the vendor offers deduplication or compression to reduce bandwidth usage and costs.

Application performance: Scope out latency, IOPS and other performance requirements based on the use cases and workloads you plan to run. Once you've qualified these against an offering's specifications, insist on hands-on testing or proof-of-concept exercises to validate performance meets expectations.

Costs: Given its extreme scalability and ease of use, cloud storage can become habit-forming, and the costs of storing and accessing data there can grow quickly. Estimate monthly storage costs for potential public cloud providers ahead of time, using their cost calculators where available, and review monthly bills to ensure estimates are in range. In addition, look for tools that help allocate and manage costs.

Until recently, cloud storage was largely the domain of developers, who benefited from ease of use and pay-as-you-go accessibility of object storage services. But the advent of cloud storage gateways and some emerging hybrid cloud software technologies has changed that, enabling storage admins to make productive use of cloud storage for primary workloads.

If you believe that at least some of your tier-two or tier-one workloads could benefit from the scalability, resilience and broad accessibility public cloud offers, take a closer look at the tiering and other storage products and services outlined here. They may prove a fast and easy onramp to the cloud for one or more of your key use cases.

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Use the cloud to enhance the functions of primary storage - TechTarget

Public Cloud Storage ‘Revolution’: 80% Price Cut, 6X Performance … – EnterpriseTech

May 5, 2017 | Author: admin

(Bedrin/Shutterstock)

A revolution in public cloud storage price/performance could be in the offing as two storage industry veterans with a track record of disruption today launched a new company that they say cuts pricing for storage in the AWS compute environment by 80 percent with a 6X performance jump.

The new company, Wasabi, targets S3, the storage tier within public cloud market leader Amazon Web Services. The startup is intended to follow in the footsteps of Carbonite, the company founded by David Friend and Jeff Flowers in 2006 that overturned the consumer backup storage industry with its fixed price model and quickly became market dominant. Friend, Flowers and 18 other former Carbonite developers have worked on the Wasabi project for more than two years.

Our vision is that cloud storage ought to be a commodity, like electricity its just there, Friend told EnterpriseTech. All you need is one size, you dont need all these crazy tiers, because were faster than the fastest and cheaper than the cheapest, all at the same time.

Wasabi is hot pluggable with the AWS ecosystem even as it seeks to replace S3 as AWS customers storage technology of choice. Available now, Wasabi is offered as object cloud storage-as-a-service connected via the S3 API to AWS. Under its pricing model, Wasabi unlike AWS does not charge for moving or retrieving data to and from AWS compute.

Source: Wasabi

Targeting enterprises with large data volumes, Wasabis price and performance advantages grow as customers data stores grow, Friend said. The annual cost of a petabyte of data stored using Wasabi is $46,800, compared with $276,000 on S3, $249,600 on Microsoft Azure and $240,000 on Google Cloud Platform, according to Wasabi.

As for performance, Wasabi claims sustained read performance of 1300 megabytes per second against S3s 191 MB/second; Wasabi claims sustained write of 563 MB/second against S3s 90 MB/second.

Source: Wasabi

We dont like vendor lock in, Friend said, we just want people to go to the best value and the best performance. The story is pretty simple: if you know S3 then you know what Wasabi is. The only difference is that its one fifth the price and six times faster.

Todays announcement has grabbed the attention of industry analysts while also generating some degree of skepticism.

The first thing you think when someone says theyre going to go toe-to-toe with Amazon is, Yeah, right! Steve Hill, senior analyst, 451 Research, told EnterpriseTech. Trying to out-Amazon Amazon is a dangerous and almost futile attempt, really.

But the companys Carbonite roots give the new company credibility, Hill said.

Obviously, Im skeptical of everything, he said. And I have no doubt if theyre promising this kind of performance at that price they should be able to deliver it. This is not a new company, theyve been doing this via Carbonite, so they really understand the storage industry.

The upshot, assuming Wasabi delivers on its price/performance promises: We may be at an inflection point where theyre revolutionizing the pricing model for cloud storage, said Hill. It certainly offers that potential.

Andrew Smith, IDC, senior research analyst - storage software, told EnterpriseTech, I think its legitimate. Its an area where there hasnt been as much competition as there could have been. Object storage went cold for a little while but now its getting more attention. Organizations have been better at applying it to a wider range of use cases. Theres still things in high transactional data that object storage cant touch, but its applicability is widening, and Wasabi has found a way to make it even more cost effective, so its going to be a good message to customers.

In targeting companies that need to store hundreds of terabytes of data, Wasabi is addressing a growing market need. Theyre offering the lowest cost at the highest capacity of storage, to compound costs savings, Smith said. A high amount of storage at longer time frames, thats where Wasabis cost proposition only gets better over time.

I think there will be plenty of demand for that type of storage increasingly demand, he said. The trends we continue to see the incredible volumes of data, the increasing value of data. Customers are looking to get not only the cheapest storage but also the best access to that type of info and to be able to utilize it in different ways. So this is a good foot in the door for Wasabi.

BlueArchive had been the new ventures code name, Friend said, a name deliberately chosen to throw off anyone trying to find out what he, Flowers and a team of other former Carbonite employees were developing under wraps.

We named the company Wasabi because its hot hot storage, Friend said. BlueArchive was only the stealth name, a decoy, to make people think we were going to do something kind of offline and cold. And thats obviously not what we were up to.

Wasabi has raised $8.5 million in a Series A round and is backed by Desh Deshpande, Bill Sahlam, Ron Skates and Jeff Parker, among other investors, according to the company. Friend, Flowers and their team began work on Wasabi in 2014.

Pressed for details on Wasabis technology strategy, Friend demurred, citing reluctance to reveal competitive advantage.

I cant tell you a lot, he said. What I can tell you is all our storage is disk-based, so most of our expenses are buying raw disks. But its the software, the file system. Wasabi storage technology does not focus on the operating system, Friend said. If you write a file on your own computer, its Windows or Linux or whatever operating system that controls what actually physically happens on the disk. We dont use any of that. We go right down to controlling the movement of the heads on the disk drives themselves.

There are a lot of things you can do if you know how to get down to that very low level code, he said. Its a very arcane part of computer science. Very few people ever bother with it because they rely on Windows or Linuxto worry about such things. But if you know specifically what youre going to be doing, being able to take control at that level gives you the ability to do a lot of things that save 20 percent here, 30 percent there, 8 percent somewhere else. Theres a long list of tricks weve learned over the years that allow us to sell at one-fifth of Amazons prices and still make pretty decent gross margins.

Wasabis first data center is collocated with AWS in Ashburn, VA, which has become a data center mecca. Sharing the same site with Amazon means faster connectivity between Wasabi storage and AWS compute, Friend said. Additional data centers in others parts of the U.S. will follow to meet customer demand.

I dont know how many data centers there are in Ashburn, there must be dozens, Friend said, and theyre all on this metro fiber loop. What it means is youve got a highly competitive situation, which is good for everybody, certainly good for us, because we can be in any of those data centers and get extremely inexpensive and extremely high bandwidth connections to any other one. So if we run out of space in one data center we just start filling up at another one its as though theyre all in one room. We can buy dark fiber down there between data centers and its crazy cheap.

SoftNAS, Talon Think Global, Act Local in Cloud Storage – DABCC.com

May 5, 2017 | Author: admin

SoftNAS, which makes a software-defined cloud network attached storage system for midrange-size companies, has solved a problem for many smaller IT shops: Those who are used to a data center NAS or a SAN (storage area network) and are coming to cloud environments and finding that those conventional functions are nowhere to be found.

To take this transition up a notch for those struggling to implement global systems, Houston-based SoftNAS announced May 2 that it has joined forces with Talon, a Mount Laurel, N.J.-based provider of enterprise-class file-sharing software for distributed locations, to enable global storage consolidation into an enterprise cloud.

The combination of Talon FAST and the SoftNAS Cloud NAS provides joint customers with an alternative central cloud-based storage namespace that is secure, highly resilient and can grow on-demand, Michael Richtberg, SoftNAS Vice-President of Business Development, told eWEEK.

The new integrated solution, available May 2, enables high-performance global file locking, file access and sharing for all users across a global enterprise, Richtberg said.

Read the entire article here, SoftNAS, Talon Think Global, Act Local in Cloud Storage

via the fine folks at SoftNAS

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SoftNAS, Talon Think Global, Act Local in Cloud Storage - DABCC.com

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