eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Today’s topics include three new unlocked international smartphones from Motorola, a breach at the Census Bureau, a new memory architecture from Intel and Micron Technology, and the release of a beta version of its Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys for Google Compute Engine program.
Motorola announced three new unlocked international smartphones, including the Moto X Style, a 4G LTE phone that will be known as the Moto X Pure in the United States and features universal LTE banding so it can work on any mobile carrier’s network.
Also unveiled during a morning Webcast from Sao Paulo were the company’s latest Moto G smartphone, which is now waterproof to 1 meter for up to 30 minutes, and the Moto X Play, which has battery life of up to 48 hours and a water-repellent design. The Moto X Play is the only one of the three that will not be for sale in the United States.
Census Bureau Director John H. Thompson publicly confirmed on July 24 that his agency was breached in an incident that exposed non-confidential information from the Federal Audit Clearinghouse that was contained in an external-facing IT system.
Thompson stressed that after several days of auditing, there was no indication that any confidential information or access to internal systems was gained by the attackers. Going a step further, within 90 minutes of learning about the network breach, the Census Bureau made the affected system inaccessible.
Intel and Micron Technology have jointly developed a new memory architecture that officials say will enable processors to more quickly access massive data archives, a needed capability in light of such trends as the proliferation of connected devices, cloud computing and analytics.
The new memory chips—which are in production now at a joint plant in Utah and will become available in 2016—will be up to 1,000 times faster and have 1,000 times more endurance than NAND, and will be 10 times denser than conventional memory.
Google’s cloud services customers who are concerned about the security and privacy of their workloads can now use their own cryptographic keys to encrypt their data.
The company has launched a beta version of its Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys for Google Compute Engine program that lets customers encrypt data using keys that are fully owned and controlled by the customers themselves.
The Google program appears designed to alleviate continuing concerns within many organizations over the integrity of enterprise data in the hands of cloud providers.