Dell EMC PowerEdge upgrades its offerings to help customers solve their IT challenges

Dell EMC PowerEdge released five new servers which have been purpose-designed to help meet organizations’ specific workload needs, while enabling IT transformation. These products aim to suit every typical customer segment.

There are three brand new Dell EMC PowerEdge rack servers and two tower options include PowerEdge R740xd2, PowerEdge R340, PowerEdge R240, PowerEdge T340, and PowerEdge T140. With all these products ready to ship, it is important for customers to know each of their capabilities.

The Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd2 is being marketed as ‘the enterprise content server,’ offering a high-capacity design that is ideal for organizations with data-intensive workloads like media streaming, messaging and software-defined storage (SDS).

The PowerEdge R740xd2 was developed to enable customers to respond effectively to data growth; simplify management across the data center; and help ensure uptime and data security. It offers large internal storage in a 2S/2U rack content server that’s purpose-built to support demanding, data-heavy workloads – everything from streaming media like video surveillance and content delivery networks to Exchange and SDS – all in a high-capacity space-saving design.

Built from the ground up to enable IT Transformation and featuring the latest generation Intel Xeon scalable processors, the Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd2 was developed to help enterprises compete in fast-moving business environment.

It includes automated intelligence to simplify management and enable rapid deployment of new servers and updates. Automating server administration in this way helps customers to reduce the time required to manage mid-to-large scale environments.

The PowerEdge R740xd2 helps deliver continuous reliability and uptime with enterprise-class drives and integrated security features – so that customers can use it to fortify their server operations.

In short, this new server is the perfect choice for customers looking for cost-effective, high-capacity storage with two-socket server performance; automated administration that’s easy to manage with proactive and predictive support options; and high availability features (front-serviceable, hot-swappable drives) and built-in security to help protect critical data.

For organizations seeking single-socket solutions, the two new 1U rack servers now added to the PowerEdge portfolio are great options to start promoting.

The Dell EMC PowerEdge R240 is ideal for budget-conscious small businesses and service providers looking for an affordable and simple-to-use dense server that they can rely on for web hosting and remote tasks. Marketed as ‘compute made easy’, it offers customers affordability, versatility and simplicity.

Meanwhile, the Dell EMC PowerEdge R340 is an ideal entry-level option for medium-sized businesses that require an efficient, scalable, dense server to address productivity and maximum uptime. Combining efficiency and scalability with automation, it’s designed to accelerate business growth.

The all-new availability of two impressive tower format servers rounds out the expanded PowerEdge portfolio.

The Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 is a great entry-level option for small business owners who need an affordable and simple-to-use server – it’s perfect for file and print management and point of sale activity. This server is specifically designed to support a growing business, making the IT infrastructure easy and worry-free while also keeping data safe and secure.

For growing small or medium businesses with remote employees, the PowerEdge T340 provides high availability and storage – making it the ideal choice for collaboration and sharing needs. It allow users to run their operations reliably, manage their IT easily and to scale dynamically, so they can grow their business without limits.

IBM Research tunes infrared antennas with cavity quantum electrodynamics for improving telecommunications

Light and matter are normally thought of as the two distinct building blocks of the physical world. However, in cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED), light and matter lose their distinct characteristics. When optical emitters (objects like atoms or quantum dots that can emit or absorb light) are placed inside a small optical cavity, the emitters and the cavity’s light field can participate in rapid energy exchanges, known as vacuum Rabi oscillations. These oscillations hybridize light and matter into new states that have both matter-like and light-like attributes.

Cavity QED, a key frontier in physics research, is an important avenue for improving telecommunications technologies and could lead to nanolasers and extremely low-power optical switches. It was also the focus of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics.

To date, all existing instances of engineered strong light-matter coupling could be classified as “hybrid systems” in which the optical emitters and cavities are separate objects.

In the December issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, IBM Research reported strong light-matter interactions can happen in a single material that both emits and confines light. This material is a crystallized film of carbon nanotubes, a new material that has been produced in the lab.

Researchers found that when they very slowly filtered carbon nanotubes, each a cylindrical nanocrystal of carbon atoms, from an aqueous suspension onto a polycarbonate membrane, the nanotubes would self-assemble into aligned, monolithic films. When the filtration process was controlled precisely, the nanotubes organized into beautiful two-dimensional hexagonal crystals.

After fabricating these carbon-nanotube films, the researchers etched the crystallized nanotube films into nanoribbons. The etched ends of the nanotubes reflect light, creating an optical cavity. Meanwhile, excitons, which are matter excitations in the nanotubes comprising electron-hole pairs, can either be excited by light or annihilate each other and emit light.

The interaction strength of strongly coupled light-matter systems is typically characterized by the frequency of the vacuum Rabi oscillations. In our crystallized nanotube films, this frequency is so high that it approaches that of the infrared light that the excitons emit – the so called “ultrastrong regime.”

Researchers found that the light-matter coupling rate in crystallized nanotube films can be up to 75 percent of the exciton emission frequency, a near record for light-matter interactions in any room temperature system.

Crystallized nanotube films could play an important role in infrared optics. Through simple electrostatic control, the nanotubes’ excitations can now be tuned from being either “matter-like” to “light-like.” Thus, our nanotube films function as strongly tunable infrared antennas. In the future, arrays of such tunable antennas could be a means of routing infrared light in free space without moving parts, for applications like 3D sensing for autonomous vehicles.

Outside of optics, the applicability of crystallized nanotube films could extend to battery anodes, high-ampacity conductors, and microelectromechanical systems.

Symantec traces Shamoon malware as the destructive threat re-emerges with reinforced sting in its tail

After a two-year absence, the destructive malware Shamoon (W32.Disttrack.B) re-emerged on Dec. 10 in a new wave of attacks against targets in the Middle East. These latest Shamoon attacks are doubly destructive, since they involve a new wiper (Trojan.Filerase) that deletes files from infected computers before the Shamoon malware wipes the master boot record.

Unlike previous Shamoon attacks, these latest attacks involve a new, second piece of wiping malware (Trojan.Filerase). This malware will delete and overwrite files on the infected computer. Shamoon itself will meanwhile erase the master boot record of the computer, rendering it unusable.

The addition of the Filerase wiper makes these attacks more destructive than use of the Shamoon malware alone. While a computer infected by Shamoon could be unusable, files on the hard disk may be forensically recoverable. However, if the files are first wiped by the Filerase malware, recovery becomes impossible.

Filerase is spread across the victim’s network from one initial computer using a list of remote computers. This list is in the form of a text file and is unique to each victim, meaning the attackers likely gathered this information during an earlier reconnaissance phase of the intrusion. This list is first copied by a component called OCLC.exe and passed on to another tool called Spreader.exe. The Spreader component will then copy Filerase to all the computers listed. It will then simultaneously trigger the Filerase malware on all infected machines.

It is possible that the Shamoon malware itself was spread via these same tools, but this is unknown. In at least one instance, Shamoon was executed using PsExec, indicating that the attackers had access to credentials for the network.

News of the attacks first emerged on Dec. 10 when Italian oil services firm Saipem said that it had been hit by a cyber attack against its servers in the Middle East. Two days later, the company said that Shamoon had been used in the attack, which affected between 300 and 400 servers and up to 100 personal computers.

Symantec has found evidence of attacks against two other organizations during the same week, in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Both organizations are involved in the oil and gas industry.

One of the new Shamoon victims Symantec observed the organization in Saudi Arabia had recently also been attacked by another group Symantec calls Elfin (aka APT33) and had been infected with the Stonedrill malware (Trojan.Stonedrill). There were additional attacks against this organization in 2018 that may have been related to Elfin or could have been the work of yet another group.

The proximity of the Elfin and the Shamoon attacks against this organization means it is possible that the two incidents are linked.

Customers of the DeepSight Intelligence Managed Adversary and Threat Intelligence (MATI) service have received reports on Shamoon which detail methods of detecting and thwarting activities of this adversary.

Keyfactor expects cybersecurity trends in quantum computing, IoT legislation and PKI for 2019

Keyfactor released its top three cybersecurity trends to watch in 2019. These trends are intended to inform and empower security professionals who are responsible for protecting their company's data, as well as reputation, given the substantial increase in cybercriminal activity in 2018.

Preparation is the key to information security at any company, regardless of its type or size. Decision makers can reduce the likelihood of a cybersecurity incident by creating a plan to address trends in the coming year.

Quantum computing will make cryptography ineffective. Most experts agree that quantum computing will be viable as soon as 2024 - and when it does, many common cryptographic algorithms will become ineffective as a result. While 2024 is still five years away, recent history reveals that many organizations will take five years or more to migrate off of old crypto, and inertia from legacy systems is often the reason.

By merely obtaining an inventory of weak keys and digital certificates can be a major undertaking, but is the first step to developing a "crypto-agile" plan to deal with cryptography-related events if and when they occur. The next step is to develop a migration plan for every key and certificate type -- and the systems they're installed on.

IoT will be the focus of security legislation. Governing bodies and other organizations will release many more rules, regulations and guidelines for IoT security in 2019.

For example, the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) just released its "Medical Device Safety Action Plan" to improve overall medical device safety. Device manufacturers in key industries such as healthcare and automotive must enforce such policies, extend certificates throughout every device across the enterprise and keep data siloed and protected. IoT will transform into a much safer platform for transferring data when these measures become standard practices.

Containerization will become a de-facto component of IT -- and carry DevOps management burden with it.  Like the virtualization wave that swept through IT in the early 2000s, containerization technologies such as Docker bring even more efficiencies to IT systems -- both on-premise and in the cloud.  

However, it can be difficult to securely manage sensitive information such as credentials, cryptographic keys, and certificates in containers that can spin up and down at a moment's notice. This is an area where many organizations may be tempted to sacrifice security in the interest of speed and ease of use.

Keyfactor, formerly Certified Security Solutions (CSS), announced  in November the appointment of Chris Hickman to the newly created position of Chief Security Officer (CSO).

Chris will be responsible for capturing the voice of Keyfactor customers and evangelizing the importance of securing every digital identity to improve cyber defense and operational efficiency.

An expert in digital identity security industry, Chris has worked at Alacris and Critical Path. He was most recently vice president of platform enablement at Keyfactor, responsible for the on-boarding of customers, systems integration, support and operations.

Symantec joins with Fortinet to deliver comprehensive cloud security service across endpoint, network and cloud environments

Symantec Corp. and Fortinet announced an expansive partnership agreement to provide customers with comprehensive and robust security solutions. Fortinet’s Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) capabilities are planned to be integrated into Symantec’s cloud-delivered Web Security Service (WSS).

Additionally, Symantec’s endpoint protection solutions are also planned to be integrated into the Fortinet Security Fabric platform. The technology partnership provides essential security controls across endpoint, network, and cloud environments that are critical to enforcing the Zero Trust security framework.

The integration provides customers with real-time, actionable threat intelligence and automated response for exploit-driven attacks and advanced malware. Interoperability between Fortinet’s SD-WAN technology will also be certified to work with Symantec’s Web Security Service through Symantec’s Technology Integration Partner Program (TIPP). As part of the collaboration, both companies plan to engage in joint go-to-market activities.

TIPP provides technology partners with everything necessary to develop innovative and differentiated product and service offerings that complement and extend the Symantec solution portfolio. In return, TIPs gain access to Symantec technology, tools and support, resulting in integrated solutions delivered to market faster and more efficiently.

Integration partners have access to a set of fundamental program services, including Symantec software licenses, installation and configuration support, free membership to TSANet, and use of the Technology Integration Partner logo to promote the relationship. Additional benefits are available to Technology Integration Partners with a deeper level of engagement.

The integration of Fortinet’s FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall with Symantec’s WSS will result in a comprehensive set of cloud-delivered threat prevention capabilities in a single service offering.

Virtustream Enterprise Cloud adds automation, security capabilities; while reducing possibility of manual errors during configuration

Virtustream announced a major upgrade to Virtustream Enterprise Cloud that includes significant cloud automation and security enhancements, which gives enterprises the ability to automate key tasks while maintaining security levels – a multi-part process that previously required manual oversight.  

This technology evolution builds on Virtustream’s expertise in delivering highly scalable, secure and high-performance cloud services for mission critical enterprise applications.

The enhancements also feature a foundationally new version of the xStream cloud management software platform including an enhanced architecture and application programming interface (API), in addition to the ability to address many of the specific challenges presented when migrating and managing enterprise applications in the cloud.

Virtustream Enterprise Cloud is built to run complex, I/O-intensive, mission-critical enterprise applications. It offers guaranteed availability and performance backed by SLAs, end-to-end security, and government and industry-specific compliance solutions. In addition, Virtustream Enterprise Cloud includes a complete suite of professional and managed services from the infrastructure up to the application layer, while achieving superior economics to maximize IT investments.

Virtustream Enterprise Cloud delivers superior value to large enterprises, while reducing the complexities of their IT operations and the inherent business risk of operating mission-critical applications.

Powered by Virtustream xStream, Virtustream Enterprise Cloud supports complex heterogeneous enterprise IT environments with mission- critical applications and workloads.

Virtustream Enterprise Cloud is managed by the xStream Cloud Management Platform. xStream provides a unified, control plane that integrates infrastructure orchestration, enterprise application automation and a suite of business intelligence and service management tools to run mission- critical applications in private, public, and hybrid clouds. 

This combination of automation and management allows for the delivery of enterprise IT as a service, with true consumption economics, service- level agreements, security and compliance features and services, to help migrate mission-critical applications to the cloud.

In addition to these enhancements, Virtustream Enterprise Cloud, a VMware Cloud Verified service, will leverage the power of the latest Dell Technologies portfolio through the use of VMware’s hybrid cloud technologies and Dell Technologies infrastructure.

Red Hat debuts commercial support for OpenJDK on Microsoft Windows to standardize builds for Java workloads

Red Hat announced the availability of long-term commercial support for OpenJDK on Microsoft Windows. By adding to its existing support for OpenJDK on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat is further enabling organizations to standardize the development and deployment of Java applications throughout the enterprise with a flexible, powerful and open alternative to proprietary Java platforms.

As an important programming languages in use, Java is used by developers across industries to create modern applications that are at the heart of digital infrastructure. These applications are extending from the desktop and datacenter to the cloud, and span multiple operating systems and platforms. Red Hat OpenShift, the company’s comprehensive enterprise Kubernetes platform, brings commercial support for OpenJDK to cloud providers, reinforcing Red Hat’s commitment to hybrid cloud and multi-cloud solutions.

A Red Hat subscription provides the latest enterprise-ready software, trusted knowledge, enhanced product security, and technical support from engineers making software the open source way. Red Hat’s support organization and deep roots in the Java ecosystem position Red Hat as a valuable partner for organizations building and deploying business-critical Java applications wherever they choose to deploy them.

Red Hat has been an active member of the OpenJDK community since 2007 and has contributed to and led various aspects of the project, such as the 64-bit ARMv8 port, AArch64 for OpenJDK, and development of the Shenandoah garbage collector. Red Hat has also served in stewardship roles for both OpenJDK 6 and OpenJDK 7.

In addition to distributing and providing life cycle support for OpenJDK, the Red Hat Middleware portfolio of open source Java products also support OpenJDK on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Microsoft Windows. These products are used by customers to create, integrate and automate modern business applications and processes, giving users full-stack support from the operating system through to application services from a single vendor.