infrastructure

WALTHAM, Mass.--Even as much of the tech world fixates on running out of Internet addresses, Deborah Magid from IBM's venture capital group predicts many more devices not traditionally considered computers will join the Internet.

I met with Magid, who is the director of software strategy at IBM's Venture Capital group, when she was in the Boston area last week to hear about IBM's view of software start-ups and new technology. Not surprisingly, IBM is tracking software advances in mobile, cloud computing, and health care, but the energy field and technologies to improve basic infrastructure figure highly … Read more

Telecommunications infrastructure maker Alcatel-Lucent announced this week new technology that will help wireless carriers expand their networks to keep up with the explosive growth in mobile data.

The company announced this week a new compact cell phone antenna system called lightRadio, which incorporates radio technology and base station technology in a single box. The entire system, which can fit on a lamp post, is a fraction of the size of today's cellular equipment. Current cellular networks require massive and power-hungry cell phone towers that house the antennas with a separate base station at the bottom of those towers that … Read more

Nearly half of those who work in critical infrastructure systems worldwide expect their company to be targeted by a computer attack over the next year, a new survey has found.

About one-third of the respondents say their company is "extremely" prepared to deal with it, according to the survey (PDF) released today by security company Symantec.

Another 36 percent to 41 percent (depending on the type of attack) say their company is "somewhat" prepared to deal with attacks that range from attempted theft and modification or destruction of data to shutting down computer networks and manipulating … Read more

A worm that targets critical infrastructure companies doesn't just steal data, it leaves a back door that could be used to remotely and secretly control plant operations, a Symantec researcher said on Thursday.

The Stuxnet worm infected industrial control system companies around the world, particularly in Iran and India but also companies in the U.S. energy industry, Liam O'Murchu, manager of operations for Symantec Security Response, told CNET. He declined to say how may companies may have been infected or to identify any of them.

"This is quite a serious development in the threat landscape," … Read more

It's been a rocky, surely difficult summer at Twitter as the company attempts to iron out longstanding problems and to prepare its servers for continued growth. The situation has led to a series of very public service outages, including a huge one Monday that left many users unable to sign in, update their profiles, or even sign up for the service in the first place.

Twitter released a series of updates on its company blogs Wednesday night about the problems and how they tie into long-term upgrades that the company has been working on. One announcement: Twitter will open … Read more

The security world is aflutter over new malware that has been spreading via USB devices and is programmed to steal data from systems running specific software used in utilities and industrial manufacturing plants.

There are a lot of moving parts to this story so we've decided to break them down and tell you what is happening and how it impacts you.

What is the malware exactly? The attack involves several components: a worm that spreads via USB drives and exploits a previously unknown vulnerability in Windows and a Trojan backdoor that looks to see if an infected machine is … Read more

This week we've seen a lot of the "fail whale," the cartoon cetacean that Twitter uses as a placeholder when its servers are swamped and its millions of tweets are inaccessible. Part of it's because, as Twitter has said, they've needed to do some crucial infrastructure repair this summer. That hasn't been made any easier by the global frenzy surrounding the World Cup soccer tournament in South Africa: World Cup goals are delivering knockout blows to Twitter, and surprise results of games can be even worse. Right around the Netherlands' unexpected victory over Brazil … Read more

In March, Twitter CEO Evan Williams first unveiled @Anywhere, a new platform aimed at media outlets to knit Twitter more deeply into their own sites. After all, Twitter has become more or less synonymous with real-time, breaking news--so it seems like any publisher would want to work @Anywhere into its code to put the latest, freshest information front and center. Right?

Unfortunately, Twitter has recently indicated that it still can't handle breaking news.

On Wednesday, when the U.S. soccer team defeated Algeria 1-0, advancing the team to the next round of the FIFA World Cup in South … Read more

The storage-focused BD Event wrapped up last week in Boston after two and a half days of presentations and networking for the enterprise storage industry--executives meeting up with executives in a kind of industry-focused, back to old college days mixer. If you're an entrepreneur with designs on the enterprise storage market, this was the place to be.

The event was bracketed by two provocative presentations: one delivered by Peter Bell of VC firm Highland Capital Partners to kick-off the event, and one by Peter Levine, senior vice president of Citrix, that concluded the formal presentation session the following day. … Read more