I love this video explaining cloud computing; it uses a picture of a dog. So many people are confused and who can blame them with all the hype out there. Some companies say that everything on the Internet is cloud computing. At it’s basic level, cloud computing is any computing capability offered on-demand over the Internet. It can be a photo sharing site or your AP system. Rather than building it yourself, you only pay for what you use. So using cloud computing is like paying for your electricity.
You use it, you pay. You don’t, you don’t pay.
In the last few years, major copyright holders in the United States, specifically the recording (RIAA) and the movie (MPAA) industries, have been wringing their hands trying to prevent piracy and copyright infringement. Peer-to-peer file sharing sites are accused as the causes of all the troubles in this game.
After successfully shutting down Napster many years ago, the industries thought they won, but other sites, like LimeWire and BitTorrent cropped up in its place. Even punitive measures, like fining a student $675,000 in damages for illegally downloading 30 songs, didn’t seem to stop the problem.
The latest approach is to enlist the support of the top internet service providers (ISP) in the US. AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cablevision, and Time Warner Cable all signed a voluntary agreement with the movie and music industries to crack down on online copyright infringers.
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Google+ (or G+) is all the rage as the shiny new object on the block. It is clearly a shot across the bow of Facebook and possibly Twitter; they have nearly reached 10 million users. Google says this is where interactions are going and clearly they have made some major strides in the right direction. I’ve always being a little wary of the new shiny object, but I feel it’s important to see what’s new; I remember the fanfare of Google Wave and Buzz. To be fair, the responses to G+ have been very positive where Buzz was very negative and Wave was lukewarm.
So is this the Facebook killer? Only time will tell. Google clearly has made it easier to deal with security. The security features seem to be self explanatory and let you decide who sees what in a simple way. The fundamental unit of security in G+ is Circles. You create a Circle to organize information and limit what you share. It’s similar to lists in Facebook and Twitter, but easier to use. You can add anyone into a Circle and even add the same person into multiple Circles. Information sharing depends on who you put in a Circle.
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eDocument Sciences’ partner Fasoo.com was honored with the 2011 Global Frost & Sullivan Award for Competitive Strategy Innovation of the Year. Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated uniqueness of strategy, leveraging competitive intelligence to improve market position.
Fasoo’s Enterprise Digital Rights Management (EDRM) software lets a business or individual control who accesses electronic files, for how long, and what rights they have. It does this by encrypting the file and applying a persistent security policy that defines who can view, print, save, and edit it. The policy travels with the file so that if it gets into the wrong hands, it can be disabled. Without the rights to view the file, it becomes useless. The file looks like random characters.
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The last few months have seen a rash of data breaches at large and small companies. Sony, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Sega are just a few of the ones that made big headlines. These breaches affected millions of people. No matter the company, if you are a customer, the consequences could be devastating.
If you are or were a customer of a company that suffers a data breach, your personally identifiable information (PII) may be sold to criminals. That means someone could be using your birth date, social security number, national identification number or credit card to commit fraud. Even though hackers like LulzSec claim they are compromising websites and databases only to expose their vulnerabilities, the vast majority of data breaches are done to make money. As Avivah Litan at Gartner Research said, “It’s a lot easier way to make money than physically robbing banks.”
If a company is breached, they will send you a letter or email explaining the details of the data breach and their response. They frequently will offer credit monitoring, refunds, free service and other measures to mitigate the risk of ruining your credit and having you take your business elsewhere.
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