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Cisco Stirs Up AXP Interest with Developer Contest
Cisco Systems has announced its Think Inside the Box Developer Contest, open to all developers over 18 years of age, and encourages proposals for applications on the Cisco Application Extension Platform (AXP). Prizes will be awarded for the most creative and compelling entries. Read more
Voltage SecureMail to Protect E-mail Communications
One of the most populous counties in the United States, California’s Orange County has standardized on a system from Voltage Security, Inc. to encrypt and protect e-mail communications for more than 26,000 full-time and contract employees across 43 county agencies. Voltage SecureMail will fulfill such privacy and compliance mandates as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), critical for the county’s communication with outside healthcare providers. It also supports the county's federated IT infrastructure, leveraging common classifications, policies, global LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) repositories, shared resources and economies of scale. "Our highest priority was to enable departments to address their areas of greatest information risk, and mitigate regulatory compliance concerns as quickly as possible," said Tony Lucich, chief information security officer and enterprise architect for the county. Also focused on cost and implementation, vendor research led Lucich’s team to select Voltage SecureMail with Identity-Based Encryption for its usability, product scalability and solution manageability, as well as low total cost of ownership. The automated encryption solution works seamlessly within the county’s inbound and outbound content management framework, and is easy enough for technology novices. Read more
Learn more about e-mail communications in the IEEE Xplore® digital library
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Oracle’s Licensing Move Previews Cloud Computing Growth, Need for Caution
Security consultancy Global Secure Systems (GSS) says that the recent Oracle decision to license its technology for use in cloud computing environments illustrates the changing future of corporate IT. According to David Hobson, managing director for GSS, porting a company’s database and other information to a service like Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) needs to be carefully planned at all levels, with special consideration given to security. “Policy decisions and security issues need to be carefully considered⎯even down to discussing the move to cloud computing with your professional indemnity insurer⎯as unless you can prove you have taken the required planning and security steps, your business insurance policy may be invalid if a data breach occurs,” he noted. Hobson also advises a full risk analysis on the technology, saying companies need to start the necessary planning now “in order to cope with what will be a sea change in their IT security needs.” Read more
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IEEE Seeks Program Evaluators
IEEE, the largest member of ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) is responsible for the peer-review evaluation of more than 750 university programs in IEEE fields of interest. To aid in this accreditation role, the IEEE Educational Activities Board (EAB) is seeking engineering professionals to serve as program evaluators. Applications for the 2008-2009 academic year are being accepted through 15 November 2008.
Information packages, including nomination forms and program evaluator qualifications are available for engineering programs and for engineering technology programs.
For further information, contact IEEE EAB Accreditation at eab-accred@ieee.org
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Open Sourcing Risk Models Suggested to Prevent Future Wall Street Meltdown
Open source is a growing IT trend that could help prevent Wall Street meltdowns of the future, according to Erik Gerding, an assistant professor of law at the University of New Mexico (USA) who researches securities law and asset price bubbles. In a draft paper made available last month, Gerding said that in 2004 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission outsourced the financial regulation to proprietary codes developed by financial services firms by agreeing to rely on computer models in assessing risk. As capability and power of the technology increased, so did the complexity of the investments, such as with mortgage securities. In 2005, (then) Federal Reserve Chairman Allan Greenspan said technology and new credit-scoring models gave lenders a means "for efficiently extending credit to a broader spectrum of consumers." Unfortunately, this included subprime mortgage borrowers, and Greenspan's assertion became wrong: up to 1 million people are estimated to lose their homes this year due to foreclosure. Human elements, such as the number of loans based on unverified income, were not part of the risk models. Gerding said that open sourcing the financial codes would let the banks and rating agencies see the actual code for models that are used to set capital requirements and how the risk was assessed. Others suggest that improving transparency will not be easy. Peter Teuten, president and CTO of Keane Business Risk Management Solutions, said there were neither common standards in risk management, nor anything like a "universal stress test" for more than a basic set of risk scenarios. Teuten questioned using open source as a model because it may lead to multiple, noncentralized development, but he does see standards emerging from the current crisis. Read more
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Express Logic and Polycore Software Offer Integrated Solution Using MCAPI
In a joint development effort, Express Logic Inc. and PolyCore Software Inc. have announced the first commercial Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) integration of the Multicore Association's Multicore Communications Application Programming Interface (MCAPI) specification. The new Poly-Messenger/MCAPI provides MCAPI support for applications running Express Logic's ThreadX RTOS. It also provides efficient standardized communication between application threads running on ThreadX, across multiple instantiations of ThreadX and/or multiple OS instantiations across multiple cores. By providing developers with a real-time multicore development platform, the Poly-Messenger/MCAPI—ThreadX combination “represents an exciting next step towards MCAPI industry adoption," commented Markus Levy, president of The Multicore Association, which was founded in 2006 to enable standardized commercial products for developer use. "Through this integration, developers can choose to use ThreadX alone or alongside any other Poly-Messenger/MCAPI-supported OS to more easily program multicore applications," said William E. Lamie, president of Express Logic. Read more
Learn more about standardized communication in the IEEE Xplore® digital library
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Web Site Highlights IEEE's Anniversary Celebrations
Planning is now in full swing worldwide for IEEE's 125th anniversary celebrations next year. Information about these activities can be found on the new 125th Anniversary Web site, which has message boards, a series of video greetings from members and some well-known technology leaders, and other interactive features. Read more
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World’s Largest Computing Grid Ready to Tackle Huge Data Challenges
Just three weeks after the first particle beams were injected into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) combines the power of more than 140 computer centers from 33 countries. The vast distributed computing system will allow 7,000 scientists around the world to analyze and manage more than 15 million gigabytes of LHC data every year. The United States has a significant role in the development and operation of the WLCG, with 15 universities and three U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories from 11 states contributing their power to the project. DOE and the National Science Foundation support contributions to the LHC and to the computing and networking infrastructures that are an integral part of the project. U.S. contributions to the WLCG are coordinated through the Open Science Grid, a national computing infrastructure for many scientific fields including biology, nanotechnology, medicine and climate science. Dedicated optical fiber networks distribute LHC data from CERN in Geneva, Switzerland to 11 major Tier-1 computer centers in Europe, North America and Asia. Tier-1 centers dispatch data to more than 140 Tier-2 centers around the world, allowing physicists to sift through the LHC data torrent in search of signals that will lead to discoveries about the nature of the physical universe. Through their distributed computing infrastructures, these physicists also help other scientific researchers increase their use of computing and storage for broader discovery.” Read more
Learn more about computing grids in the IEEE Xplore® digital library
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Two New IEEE Milestones
Read about two recent IEEE Milestones in Electrical Engineering and Computing⎯the first wireless radio broadcast and, for its time, the largest private U.S. electricity-generating plant. Read more
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IP-Touch Solution for Apartment Foyers
Switch Automation installed their IP-Touch intercom door station to a 115-apartment complex in Brisbane, Australia. The new glass-covered, patent pending unit enables full 2-way communication to any session initiation protocol (SIP) enabled voice and video enabled device. Read more
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