Sean Michael Kerner

PARIS—At the OpenStack Summit here, a security researcher discussed the recent Heartbleed and Shellshock vulnerabilities and gave a score for the impact of each, based on a number of threat-modeling metrics. Both the Heartbleed and Shellshock bugs were open-source flaws found in many Linux distributions, and both had the potential to impact OpenStack cloud users. […]

PARIS—Securing the cloud isn’t just about protecting the network layer from external attacks; it’s also about being able to detect fraudulent activities running on the cloud. At the OpenStack Summit here, a group of researchers presented their findings on how to use the OpenStack Ceilometer project—used primarily for billing and metering of cloud usage—to detect […]

PARIS—Over the course of the past year, there have been hundreds of millions of dollars in OpenStack-related funding and acquisition activities. In a panel at the OpenStack Summit here, some of the top venture capitalists detailed what they’re investing in and what they want to see. While OpenStack itself is open-source software, there are a […]

PARIS—OpenStack and Amazon aren’t necessarily direct competitors, though both are competing for a slice of enterprise budgets for cloud services. At the OpenStack Summit here, Mark Collier, chief operating officer of the OpenStack Foundation, delivered the second-day keynote today, explaining where he sees Amazon and OpenStack in the cloud market. Collier was joined on the […]

PARIS—At the OpenStack Summit here, there is a lot excitement about how the open-source cloud is already being used in production. It’s a level of excitement that quite literally drove right onto the keynote stage. Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack Foundation, kicked off the keynotes by outlining the current state of the IT […]

It’s hip to talk about the Internet of things, and today security vendor Tempered Networks is using HIP (Host Identity Protocol) to secure IoT. Tempered Networks is the rebranded name for a company formerly known as Asguard Networks. The roots of Asguard are with its founder David Mattes, who now will be the CTO of […]

Google researchers first publicly disclosed a flaw dubbed “POODLE” in the SSL 3.0 protocol on Oct. 14. Though Google made a patch available for servers to help mitigate the risk, one of the best long-term solutions to the flaw is for browser vendors to drop support for SSL 3.0, which is now what Google is […]

Startup BigPanda emerged from stealth mode on Oct. 28, complete with funding and a cloud-based software-as-a-service model (SaaS) for helping enterprises understand IT incidents. BigPanda has raised $7 million in a Series A round of funding, which included the participation of Mayfield and Sequoia Capital. Including seed funding, the company has raised a total of […]

Whenever a security exploit is fixed, users are advised to patch quickly to reduce the risk of attack. In the case of a recent open-source Drupal content management system (CMS) vulnerability, the window in which users needed to patch before being exploited has been quantified as being only seven hours. On Oct. 15, Drupal issued […]

A majority of industry experts foresee a major cyber-attack by 2025 that will cause harm, according to the findings of a new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The study, based on a poll of 1,642 experts in technology and other fields, found that 61 percent indicated they expect a major cyber-attack […]

From Cyber-Attacks to DevOps: Security Experts Cover Mix of Topics By Sean Michael Kerner Car Security in the Cross Hairs Chris Valasek, director of vehicle security research at IOActive, discussed the potential attacks and risk that could affect modern vehicles. Capture the Flag Comes to Toronto In the exhibitor hall at SecTor 2014, there was […]

Facebook today announced a new open-source framework, called osquery, that could yield new security insight for enterprises. Osquery is designed to turn operating system information into a format that can be queried using standard SQL-based statements. “Osquery exposes an operating system as a high-performance relational database,” Facebook developer Mike Arpaia wrote in a Facebook note. […]