TUESDAY, JULY 3, 2012
TECHNOLOGY
Virtual Machines in GCC ‘underprotected’ KUWAIT: Only 19% of GCC companies are using dedicated agent-less security solutions to protect their virtual infrastructure - meaning many are throwing away one of the key advantages of virtualization by failing to make the most effective use of hardware resources. This is one of the findings of a survey conducted by Kaspersky Lab among GCC IT specialists. It has also emerged that 63% of all GCC enterprises prefer or plan to protect virtual devices using the same security solutions as on their physical computers. Moreover, 60% of enterprises have admitted that they use a single security policy for physical and virtual environ-
ments, and only 21% of them see this as a temporary measure until a dedicated policy is developed for the virtual infrastructure. Experts feel that this approach disturbs the balance between a virtual environment’s performance and security. In contrast to dedicated solutions, regular security solutions intended for physical devices require copies of signature databases and AV engines to be installed on each individual virtual machine. This may lead to adverse effects, including scanning storms and I/O storms that substantially slow down the host server - or even causes it to crash. “The main reason for this is a lack of
awareness in the business community about the different facets of securing a virtual environment. Despite the growing popularity of virtualization technologies, many companies appear somewhat careless in regard to IT security. Risks tend to be underestimated; many IT specialists share the misconception that virtual infrastructure is by nature more secure than it actually is. Last but not least, companies don’t know enough about dedicated security solutions,” says Vladimir Udalov, Senior Corporate Product Marketing Manager at Kaspersky Lab. “Our dedicated security solutions Kaspersky Security for Virtualization - a
product that was developed with a special focus on protecting virtual environments and recently launched onto the market.” Learn more about security for virtualization at Kaspersky Lab’s ‘Be Ready for What’s Next’ website: http://me.kaspersky.com/en/beready/ Detailed results of the survey are available in the Exclusive Content section of Kaspersky Lab’s web portal dedicated to virtual environment security. To gain access to the study “Implementing Virtualization and Ensuring IT Security in Virtual Environments: Trends in (country)’s Corporate Sector”, you need to complete a simple registration proce-
dure. Kaspersky Lab is the largest antivirus company in Europe. It delivers some of the world’s most immediate protection against IT security threats, including viruses, spyware, crimeware, hackers, phishing, and spam. The company is ranked among the world’s top four vendors of security solutions for endpoint users. Kaspersky Lab products provide superior detection rates and one of the industry’s fastest outbreak response times for home users, SMBs, large enterprises and the mobile computing environment. Kaspersky(r) technology is also used worldwide inside the products and services of the industry’s leading IT security solution providers.
Apple pays $60 million to end China iPad trademark row Long-running legal battle
SENDAI: Senior vice president of Google, Rachel Whetstone (left), answers questions during a press conference in Sendai, northern Japan, yesterday as special representative of the UN secretary-general for disaster and risk reduction Margareta Wahlstrom, country manager of Twitter Japan James Kondo and vice president of Google Brian McClendon (R) look on. Google hosted the one-day international conference to study the role of technology in disaster preparedness and relief. —AFP
Google urges govts to share disaster data SENDAI, Japan: Google yesterday urged governments to get better at sharing information to allow citizens and first responders to make better use of the Internet during natural disasters. At a conference in quake-prone Japan, Rachel Whetstone, the firm’s senior vice president of public policy and communications, said some countries hesitate over disclosing data. She said this prevents civil society from creating new services to help citizens in need. “We certainly have found access to data has enormously improved many of our products, including maps,” she said at Google’s “Big Tent” conference, designed to discuss issues related to the Internet and society. Roughly 430 participants gathered for the first “Big Tent” in Asia, held in this northern city, which was badly hit by the deadly earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. “We are still seeing quite a few governments globally who are quite closed with their data. If we could have... greater access to that data, I think we could do even more amazing things,” Whetstone said. Tokyo was criticised for not publishing data it had as reactors at Fukushima went into meltdown, spreading radiation over a large area and forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes. Public officials have said they were worried about sowing panic with information that was not readily understandable. Engineers at the Google event also complained how Japan initially released radiation contamination data in PDF format, making it difficult for scientists around the world to easily edit and analyse them. The global rush to access the data also caused the science ministry’s servers to crash, prompting private IT firms and academics to scramble to help disseminate the data in easy-to-use formats with English translations. “Scientists were very eager to attack this data if it could be organised,” Brian McClendon, Google vice president of technology.
Google strengthened its disaster response operations after Hurricane Katrina hit the southern United States in 2005. The IT giant offered “person finder” services in Japan to help reunite families along Japan’s northern Pacific coasts which were hit by the 9.0-magnitude quake and subsequent deadly tsunami, triggering the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. It also actively mapped areas hit by the tsunami, publishing photos of communities before and after the natural disaster. But useful data from governments around the world in crises are difficult to collect, McClendon said. “One of the challenges we have discovered in Katrina remains today, which is open data and being able to get it and deploy it and lay it on top of other data. It is what really makes a difference,” he said. Masaakira James Kondo, country manager for Twitter Japan, said he is now helping the Japanese government draft new guidelines for releasing information in crisis situations. “There are not a lot of examples, where an earthquake of this scale hit a highincome nation that has Internet readily available,” Kondo said. “The government probably was the single entity that lost the public trust the most,” he said. The chaos in Japan after the triple disaster was amplified by fear of unknown health effects from the nuclear crisis, said Margareta Wahlstrom, UN special representative for disaster risk reduction. Experts at the conference also stressed the importance of keeping a free flow of information on the Internet, even if it risked possible distribution of false information. Meanwhile, consumers of information must also be educated to maximise the benefit of IT in disasters, said Wahlstrom of the United Nations. “There is enormous work to do with the users-communities, individuals, organisations, local governments-about how to apply this data, and what to do with the knowledge actually at their fingertips today,” she said. —- AFP
Carbon neutral toner, ink cartridges recycling scheme launched in UAE DUBAI: Canon Emirates, a leader in imaging solutions, yesterday announced plans to launch a carbon neutral Toner and Ink Cartridges recycling program in the UAE. The program will be launched with the support of Industryre, a leading sustainable management consultancy firm. Shadi Bakhour, General Manager, Canon Emirates, said: “This announcement is part of our on-going commitment to be a socially responsible and environmentally sustainable company. At Canon, we continue to become more environmentally efficient across all our operations and to develop innovative technologies that can reduce the environmental footprint of our products and services. “We are very pleased that the UAE market is setting a precedent in the region with this pioneering project. This is in line with our corporate philosophy of Kyosei, which means living and working together for the common good, and given that the UAE is a commercial hub for the Middle East, we feel that it is only fitting that we start the roll-out with the Emirates.” In the long term, Canon Middle East plans to expand the program to all markets in the region. However, during the
initial rollout in the UAE, Canon Emirates will be aiming to cater to Canon’s corporate customers from all sectors in the UAE. A unique feature of the scheme is that any CO2 [AJ-J-1]emissions generated as part of this process, for example, during the transportation of the collection boxes, will be estimated and offset through a carbon credit offsetting procedure. Carbon credits are similar to certificates that represent a reduction of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Projects that prevent the generation of greenhouse gases or remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere earn these credits, which can in turn then be “sold” to other businesses and individuals to “offset” the emissions they generate. One carbon credit is the equivalent to a saving of one tonne of CO2 Industryre said: “We are delighted to partner with Canon on this project. At Industryre we are committing to help companies meet their sustainability and business objectives. We are looking forward to bringing together our worldclass expertise across the different sustainability disciplines to help launch this initiative in the UAE,” Ahmed Detta, Managing Partner and Co-Founder, Industryre LLC.
SHANGHAI: Apple has paid $60 million to end a dispute over who could use the iPad name in China, a court said yesterday, giving the US tech giant more certainty in selling its tablet computer in the Chinese market. Apple paid the sum last week to settle its long-running legal battle with Chinese computer maker Shenzhen Proview Technology, the High Court of the southern province of Guangdong said in a statement. “This means that the dispute between Apple and Shenzhen Proview over the rights to the iPad brand is resolved in a satisfactory manner,” said the statement posted on the court’s website. The amount paid by Apple was well below the $400 million demanded by the Chinese firm. Both Proview, based in the southern city of Shenzhen, and Apple had claimed ownership of the Chinese rights to the “iPad” trademark. Proview’s Taiwanese affiliate registered “iPad” as a trademark in several countries including China as early as 2000 — years before Apple began selling its hugely successful tablet computer. Apple subsequently bought the rights for the global trademarkincluding from the Taiwanese affiliate. But the Shenzhen branch of Proview said the deal did not include the rights for mainland China and the two sides had been locked in a legal feud since the China launch of the iPad in 2010. Proview urged Chinese authorities to ban the sale, import and export of the iPad late last year after a Guangdong court issued a ruling against Apple. However, although a few Chinese cities reportedly ordered iPads to be seized, those calls were largely ignored. The Chinese firm also sued Apple in China’s commercial hub of Shanghai and in the US state of California, but the lawsuits were
SHANGHAI: A mother and daughter play with an Apple iPad at an Apple store in Shanghai yesterday. The US technology giant has paid a Chinese firm $60 million to settle a long-running dispute over the iPad trademark in China, a court said. — AFP thrown out. A lawyer for Proview, Xie Xianghui, said the debt-ridden Chinese company had originally sought $400 million in compensation for giving up the rights but settled for the lower amount out of “practical” considerations. “We previously hoped that the compensation would be $400 million, so that it would be enough to pay back all the debts,” Xie told AFP on Monday. “We have to say it is the practical choice. It is a comprehensive settlement and the end of the lawsuit in mainland China.” Xie said Proview felt “pressure” to settle, though he declined to say why. “Court mediation gave us some pressure,” he said. Analysts said the Chinese gov-
ernment wanted the matter resolved, wary of the damage a ruling against Apple could do for the foreign business climate in China. It is rare for a Chinese enterprise to accuse an overseas firm of trademark breaches-although foreign companies frequently complain of intellectual property rights violations in China. “It was clear the Chinese government would prefer a settlement,” said Shaun Rein, managing director for Shanghai-based China Market Research Group. “For Apple, it’s a cheap settlement. For Proview, they just needed the cash.” The legal battle did not halt sales of the iPad through Apple’s five retail stores in mainland China, its online store and many licensed dealers.
But, amid uncertainty over how the Chinese courts would rule, the row loomed as a potential huge roadblock for Apple if it lost. Rein said the settlement should allow Apple to focus more clearly on China. “Having these rights, they don’t have an excuse anymore to be slow in introducing the new iPad line into China,” Rein said, adding that although Apple products were wildly popular in China the company could still do much better. Greater China-which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan-has become Apple’s fastest-growing region, with revenues second only to the United States. Apple officials did not respond to requests for comment on Monday’s announcement. — AFP
EMC launches new data domain DUBAI: At EMC World 2012, EMC yesterday announced new EMC Data Domain and EMC Avamar deduplication systems and software that transform the backup and recovery landscape. The new products are high performance, scalable, purpose-built backup appliances that tightly integrate with each other, with backup software and with enterprise applications. These new capabilities further differentiate the EMC backup and recovery portfolio from competitors with point products, and chart the EMC vision for the future of backup and recovery. For years, the most common and daunting challenges backup administrators faced were backup window times and dealing with slow and unreliable tape-based recoveries. Data deduplication technology enabled high-performance purpose-built backup appliances to address these issues. Today, cloud and big data are transforming IT environments, but legacy backup systems can stall or cripple these valuable IT transformation projects. By delivering a capability-rich, next generation backup and recovery platform that builds in unprecedented levels of performance, integration and management, EMC frees customers from the complexities of protecting IT environments that are changing and expanding. This gives customers flexibility and choice in how they attack their most pressing data protection challenges. EMC once again establishes a new industry performance benchmark for the world’s fastest single controller deduplication storage system with the introduction of the new Data Domain DD990. Similarly, Avamar 6.1 deduplication software and system delivers the industry’s fastest backup and recovery performance for VMware environments, eclipsing the performance levels of its nearest competitor by 3x on backups and a staggering 30x on recoveries. Avamar 6.1 also simplifies backup management for key business critical applications with new support for SAP, Sybase and Microsoft SQL Server 2012 and enhanced support for Oracle. In addition, Avamar 6.1 further increases its support for virtual environments with expanded Microsoft Hyper-V features. Finally, new Data Domain software brings exciting capabilities to the Data Domain family, broadening Data Domain archiving capabilities for extended retention and regulatory compliance, expanding the Data Domain Boost ecosystem and enhancing the Data Domain Data Invulnerability Architecture. Combined, these announcements give customers tighter integration, simplified management and the world’s fastest backup performance. EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Fundamental to this transformation is cloud computing. Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect and analyze their most valuable asset - information - in a more agile, trusted and costefficient way.
Woman behind ‘Centipede’ recalls game icon’s birth NEW YORK: Dona Bailey was working as a computer programmer at General Motors when she heard the Pretenders song “Space Invader” and fell in love with it. The year was 1980. She had no clue about video games. A friend heard her say that she liked the song, and he got really excited. He told her there was a “Space Invaders” game at a bar nearby. They went to lunch so she could see what that song was about. “He gave me a quarter and I lost all my lives before I could even figure out what I was supposed to do on the screen,” she says. “But I got really intrigued.” That’s how she came to join Atari, the company that cemented the video game industry in the 1970s and early 1980s with “Pong,” and thanks in part to Bailey, “Centipede.” Though she stayed only two years, Bailey left her mark as one of the rare female programmers at Atari. There wasn’t any “Googling” in those days. Finding out more about the world of “Space Invaders” and arcade games meant asking around. “Within a month or so, I heard about Atari,” she says. She found out that the company, founded 40 years ago this week, was using the same Motorola processor to program games that she was using at a GM plant in Santa Barbara, Calif., to program climate-control displays in cars. She was hired at Atari in 1980 as the only female programmer in its nascent arcade division. When she left a muchlarger Atari two years later, she was still the only one in that division, and one of the few in the entire company. It would be tempting to say women have come far since then, and in some ways that is the case. It’s rare today to have just one token female engineer at a tech company.
Yet three decades later, there’s still a dearth of female programmers in Silicon Valley and beyond. Much of that goes back to education. Women receive fewer than a fifth of the bachelor’s degrees awarded in computer science, even though they get nearly 60 percent of all bachelor’s degrees, according to the National Science Foundation. In 1980, 30 percent of the computer science degrees went to women. Trailblazers such as Bailey often found themselves alone in a sea of men, giving them a peek at male culture that few women had access to. “It was interesting to see how a male society functioned,” she says. “It was kind of rough sometimes, too. It was a culture that I don’t think they were thinking ‘there is one woman, we should modify our behavior for her sake’ ... I grew a thicker skin.” She recalls a notebook that Atari had at that point, filled with ideas for about 30 game projects. The only idea that she didn’t find violent was a short, two-sentence description about a multi-segmented insect that walks out on the screen and winds its way down toward the player. — AP