November 2011
Military ponders private cloud services
Article Excerpt: It’s easy to see why a large and diverse organization such as the military is drawn to cloud computing: The technology allows large amounts of data to be sent and stored just about anywhere — even divided among locations worldwide.
Although almost effortless data dispersion helps give cloud computing a sharp cost and performance edge, the downside is that critical information can land in storage systems that lack adequate security, privacy and other important safeguards.
Full Article: http://goo.gl/PbjEL
Article Source: Defense Systems
Get hacked, don’t tell: drone base didn’t report virus
Article Excerpt: Officials at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada knew for two weeks about a virus infecting the drone “cockpits” there. But they kept the information about the infection to themselves—keeping the unit that’s supposed to serve as the Air Force’s cyber security specialists in the dark. The network defenders at the 24th Air Force learned of the virus by reading about it in Danger Room.
The virus, which records the keystrokes of remote pilots as their drones fly over places like Afghanistan, is now receiving attention at the highest levels; the four-star general who oversees the Air Force’s networks was briefed on the infection this morning. But for weeks, it stayed (you will pardon the expression) below the radar: a local problem that local network administrators were determined to fix on their own.
Full Article: http://goo.gl/BgZJS
Article Source: ars technica
Raytheon shows off TransTalk speech translator for Android, hopes to find a home in the Army’s app store
Article Excerpt: We’ve already heard about some of the smartphone apps that may or may not eventually find their way into the Army’s own app store, and Raytheon is now hoping that it’ll be tapped it to provide a key one. As Wired’s Danger Room reports, the company has developed a new version of its TransTalk app for Android phones, which is able to translate speech from English to Arabic, Dari and Pashto (and vice versa).
Full Article: http://goo.gl/yZcvg
Article Source: Engadget
Oak Ridge Labs Builds Fastest Supercomputer
Article Excerpt: The Oak Ridge National Laboratory will use Nvidia processors to build one of the world’s fastest supercomputers for its Department of Energy (DOE) facility.
Oak Ridge already is at work on the first phase of the so-called “Titan” supercomputer, a Cray XK6 machine that will upgrade its existing Jaguar supercomputer with 960 Tesla M2090 GPUs from Nvidia, according to the processor vendor. The GPUs are based on Nvidia’s current chip architecture, Fermi.
Full Article: http://goo.gl/D1ys8
Article Source: Information Week