Wayne Rash

About

Wayne Rash is a content writer and editor with a 35-year history covering technology. He’s a frequent speaker on business, technology issues and enterprise computing. He is the author of five books, including his most recent, "Politics on the Nets." Rash is a former Executive Editor of eWEEK and a former analyst in the eWEEK Test Center. He was also an analyst in the InfoWorld Test Center and editor of InternetWeek. He's a retired naval officer, a former principal at American Management Systems and a long-time columnist for Byte Magazine.

Washington Ponders Security, Again, but Its Motives Aren’t Clear

The Senate Armed Services Committee has started a week dense with cyber-security hearings and other cyber concerns with questions about the intent by the White House to take security seriously. Perhaps coincidentally, late last week President Barack Obama met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and reached an understanding of some sort about Chinese spying on […]

EMV Switch This Week Could Threaten Many Businesses in U.S.

The long-awaited credit card liability shift happens on Thursday, Oct. 1, and for many businesses and consumers, it will be a total surprise. Despite articles describing the coming change in who has to pay for purchases made with counterfeit cards that have been running for years, and despite announcements from the president of the United […]

Spiceworks’ Large User Community Serves as Important Business Asset

AUSTIN, Texas—”IT Pros are hard to reach,” explained Jay Hallberg as we talked in the press room of the SpiceWorld conference here. Hallberg was answering my questions about how a company such as Spiceworks, which gives its products away for free, manages to stay in business. It’s the elusive nature of the IT professionals who […]

Spiceworks Adds Free IT Pro Concierge to Service Lineup

AUSTIN, Texas—The annual SpiceWorld conference here, known mostly for costumed users, orange dinosaurs and wacky events took an unexpected turn. Actually more than one. Not only did the company get a new CEO while keeping the old one, the company known for giving away its products for free has now started giving away services for […]

Volkswagen Emission Test Scheme Probably Not Industry’s Only Case

By now you certainly know that Volkswagen, AG of Germany has been caught fudging emissions test results for its cars with diesel engines. Engineers with the California Air Resources Board found during compliance testing that while VW cars with diesel engines passed the standard emissions tests, they failed when subjected to real-world driving tests. What […]

Big Data Analysis Tool Predicts Republican Debate Winners, Losers

David Waldrop and I were sitting in the National Press Club’s legendary Truman Lounge watching two huge television screens showing CNN’s coverage of the second Republican debate. Sitting on a table in front of us was a laptop computer running Linux and a data analysis tool called LUX2016 and it was getting as much attention […]

Senate Holds Hearings on Updated ECPA Data Privacy, Storage Rules

The Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings Sept. 16 on proposed updates to the Stored Communications Act, a relic of the mid-1980s, which is a part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). Committee members asked various stakeholders what they thought should be done to update that part of the ECPA. As is the case with […]

Smart Cities Require IoT Data to Boost Efficiency, Sustainability

According to the folks at Bechtel, the engineering mega-corporation that builds the world’s biggest projects, something like 70 percent of all people will live in urban centers by 2050. Today, according to the United Nations, that number is just over half of the population. To support that vast increase in urban populations, those cities must […]

How to Fix the Many IoT Security Gaps That Nobody Is Thinking About

It’s impossible to state accurately just how many devices are connected to the Internet. For one thing, the number changes by the minute as connections grow. For another, many if not most of those devices work quietly in the shadows simply doing their jobs and not attracting attention. On my three-hour drive from my office […]

Apple’s iPad Pro Delivers New Features Needed to Spur Tablet Sales

Imagine that Apple instead of Microsoft designed the Surface Pro and you’ll have a good idea of what to expect with the iPad Pro. Both tablets are about the same size and thickness and both have an optional magnetic keyboard. Both devices have an active stylus, but Microsoft is a standard feature, while Apple’s is […]