A crucial part of securing IT infrastructure, applications and services is asking independent white hat hackers to hack it. Hackers will try to break in regardless, so you might as well be part of the process to maximize the benefits. Unfortunately, not every company has the resources to hire a penetration testing team.
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Microsoft’s open source development tool is an important piece of the developer’s toolkit. Built using GitHub’s cross-platform Electron framework, Visual Studio Code is a full-featured development editor that supports a wide selection of languages and platforms, from the familiar C and C# to modern environments and languages like Go and Node.js, with parity between Windows, MacOS, and Linux releases.
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(Insider Story)

Hybrid IT is disrupting many processes in IT organizations and contributing to organizational complexity. That complexity extends to identity management, which allows organizations to understand not only who has access to the environment, but what has access as we expand into the internet of things. So what impact does hybrid IT have on identity management? To answer that requires an understanding of how we arrived at our current position.
The waves of identity The history of identity management can be described in three waves.
The first was driven by IT operations teams, who were reacting to disgruntled business users who were tired of waiting days or weeks to get access to IT services when they first joined a company. Operations had to become more efficient by automating the provisioning of entitlements, and revoking those entitlements quickly when employees left the company or no longer needed it.
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Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is the standard way network administrators assign IP addresses in IPv4 networks, but eventually organizations will have to pick between two protocols created specifically for IPv6 as the use of this newer IP protocol grows.
DHCP, which dates back to 1993, is an automated way to assign IPv4 addresses, but when IPv6 was designed, it was provided with an auto-configuration feature dubbed SLAAC that could eventually make DHCP irrelevant. To complicate matters, a new DHCP – DHCPv6 – that performs the same function as SLAAC was independently created for IPv6.
[ Now read 20 hot jobs ambitious IT pros should shoot for. ] Deciding between SLAAC and DHCPv6 isn’t something admins will have to do anytime soon, since the uptake of IPv6 has been slow, but it is on the horizon.
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Google's new Android 9 Pie release has plenty of fresh features and interface changes, but one of the software's most significant security improvements has managed to stay mostly off the radar.
In addition to all of the oft-discussed privacy and security enhancements, y'see, Pie has an out-of-sight and semi-advanced option. It's not something you'd use every day — or often at all, really — but if the right sort of occasion ever comes along, you'll be glad you have it enabled.
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Apple’s focus on machine intelligence in imaging and digital health seems likely to accelerate development of innovative health solutions, grabbing iOS developers a slice of this fast-growing market segment.
A healthy opportunity A recent Signify Research survey claims artificial intelligence (AI) in medical imaging will become a $2 billion market by 2023, pointing to the rapid evolution of various forms of analysis and detection software.
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Companies have long relied on solid-state drive (SSD) technology to power their data centers. But not all SSD tools are built equal. Many of today’s off-the-shelf and client-grade solutions can fail, just when it matters most.
That’s a problem. Not only do organizations rely on data center servers to keep critical systems up and running, but they can be an important source of revenue, especially for cloud services providers.
The high cost of failure
Then there are the considerable costs of data center server failures: According to an ITIC survey, 81% of respondents indicated that a single hour of downtime cost their business over $300,000. And a staggering one-third or 33% of enterprises estimate an hour of downtime to cost $1 million to over $5 million. Not to mention the psychological and productivity toll an outage can take on IT teams.
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For content delivery networks to generate more revenue, they need to deliver more content. However, storing this additional data can be costly.
Enter solid-state drive (SSD) technology. Once financially out-of-reach for many organizations, today’s SSD solutions are built for data center usage – at a Client PC price.
Yet many organizations continue to base their storage investment decisions on a single metric – cost per gigabyte. That’s a mistake. Today’s organizations must look beyond cost per gigabyte and examine the numerous advantages SSDs offer over hard disk drives (HDDs). A better measure is Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), which factors in all capital and operating expenses.
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So now we know: P is for Pie – as in Android Pie, the latest iteration of Google's mobile OS. It officially arrived Aug. 6, is already rolling out to Pixel devices and – depending on how quickly other Android device makers get moving – it should show up for non-Pixel users over the next few months.
That makes this a good time to hear from Computerworld's JR Raphael about just what users can look forward to when they finally get their hands on their upcoming slice of Pie. (Sorry, just had to get that in there.)
[ Related: Android apps: Best of the best ] Raphael spoke to Computerworld Executive Editor Ken Mingis about a slew of UI/navigation changes that will almost certainly require users to unlearn (and relearn) how to move around the OS; the growing use of AI and Machine Learning to make devices more predictive; and Google's coordinated efforts to speed up the pace of Android upgrades with “Project Treble.”
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So now we know: P is for Pie – as in Android Pie, the latest iteration of Google's mobile OS. It officially arrived Aug. 6, is already rolling out to Pixel devices and – depending on how quickly other Android device makers get moving – it should show up for non-Pixel users over the next few months.
That makes this a good time to hear from Computerworld's JR Raphael about just what users can look forward to when they finally get their hands on their upcoming slice of Pie. (Sorry, just had to get that in there.)
[ Related: Android apps: Best of the best ] Raphael spoke to Computerworld Executive Editor Ken Mingis about a slew of UI/navigation changes that will almost certainly require users to unlearn (and relearn) how to move around the OS; the growing use of AI and Machine Learning to make devices more predictive; and Google's coordinated efforts to speed up the pace of Android upgrades with “Project Treble.”
To read this article in full, please click here