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DDN Announces Intent to Acquire Nexenta, the Market Leader in Software-Defined Storage for 5G and IoT
DDN Broadens AI and Multi-Cloud Data Management Leadership; Bringing Best in Class 5G and IoT Infrastructure Software to Enterprises, Telcos and Service Providers
SANTA CLARA, Calif. and SAN JOSE, Calif. – May 6, 2019 – DataDirect Networks (DDN), the global leader in AI and Multi-Cloud Data Management, today announced its intent to acquire Nexenta, the market leader in Software Defined Storage (SDS) for 5G and Internet of Things (IoT), creating the Nexenta by DDN division.
The acquisition adds powerful enterprise-class scale-up and scale-out software capabilities for hardware-, protocol-, stack/platform-, cloud- and app-agnostic deployments to DDN's product portfolio. It brings 3,000 enterprise, telco and service provider (SP) customers, 300 go to market partners, 50 patents and nearly 2,000 petabytes of storage capacity to DDN's already significant customer, partner and IP ecosystem.
"Nexenta helped create the Software Defined Storage market and achieved a leadership position in it by deploying more than $100 Million of software globally" said Alex Bouzari, CEO and co-founder of DDN. "With the addition of Nexenta's great team, IP, and its visionary CEO Tarkan Maner, DDN is broadening our markets beyond AI, Big Data, virtualization and Multi-Cloud, and accelerating our investments in next generation 5G, IoT and enterprise software. No one else can bring such a degree of data management freedom, value and flexibility to the marketplace."
Tweet This: @ddn_limitless announces intent to acquire @nexenta, broadening #AI and multi-cloud data management leadership and bringing best in class #5G and #IoT infrastructure software to enterprises, telcos and service providers. http://bit.ly/2IYTNn7
DDN is combining three technology powerhouses, DDN® Storage, Tintri® by DDN and now Nexenta® by DDN, for the benefit of its customers' AI and Multi-Cloud Data Management needs:
DDN Storage delivers the world's most powerful and comprehensive AI, big data and data management at scale product portfolio
Tintri by DDN offers the ultimate in simplicity and control for virtualized environments and enterprise applications
Nexenta by DDN provides the most cost and performance-optimal software-defined data services for enterprises, telcos and SPs with 5G and IoT requirements
"Nexenta's customers, partners, investors and our entire team are very excited about joining the fast-growing DDN family, and accelerating the massive market disruption which is helping customers digitally transform their legacy IT infrastructures thanks to our innovative and award-winning 5G and IoT-driven software," said Tarkan Maner, CEO of Nexenta. "As part of DDN we will scale financially, operationally, and geographically, giving our customers and partners the freedom and agility to operate and innovate efficiently, as they build and expand their AI and Multi-Cloud capabilities."
With 3,000 customers and $100 Million of software deployed globally, Nexenta is already the world's largest app-agnostic pure play SDS vendor. DDN's increased investment will broaden the company's product and technology portfolio, better addressing AI, multi cloud and next generation communications network requirements for telcos and SPs. Nexenta customers and partners will benefit from DDN's larger global customer, partner and service ecosystem and IP footprint, along with its fast growing and solid operational and financial performance.
"DDN has a long track record of creating advanced storage infrastructures for challenging use cases in a number of demanding markets including AI, HPC, media and entertainment and life sciences," said Henry Baltazar, research VP of 451 Research. "The acquisition of SDS pioneer Nexenta extends DDN's storage product portfolio into mainstream midrange and enterprise use cases while also opening up new market opportunities in emerging markets such as 5G and IoT."
Nexenta by DDN will continue to offer SDS solutions through its distribution and reseller partners with all existing platforms and components. Nexenta partners will receive more news over the coming months about new solutions as the DDN roadmap broadens.
"We are excited about the DDN acquisition of Nexenta," said Chris Orlando, CEO and Co-Founder of ScaleMatrix, whose national footprint of high-density data centers and cloud hosting platforms are specifically designed to support transformative high-performance computing requirements. "Our clients benefit from the flexibility and performance of Nexenta's robust SDS solutions and platform-agnostic strategy, which provide great differentiation for the HPC, AI, and high-performance data analytics (HPDA) verticals we serve. With escalating demands from our clients for ultra-scalable compute and data storage platforms, we look forward to the exciting developments which will result from this new relationship."
As the leading provider of AI and Data Management software and hardware solutions, spanning edge to core for intensive workloads such as AI, Big Data and IoT, DDN is enabling organizations to successfully accelerate the digital transformation of their business in a platform- and vendor-agnostic way, and with full support for private and multiple public cloud deployment models. The Nexenta acquisition broadens and enhances the value DDN brings to its customers, partners and to the marketplace.
About DDN
DataDirect Networks (DDN) is the world's leading big data storage supplier to data-intensive, global organizations. For more than 20 years, DDN has designed, developed, deployed and optimized systems, software and storage solutions that enable enterprises, service providers, universities and government agencies to generate more value and to accelerate time to insight from their data and information, on premise and in the cloud. Organizations leverage the power of DDN storage technology and the deep technical expertise of its team to capture, store, process, analyze, collaborate and distribute data, information and content at the largest scale in the most efficient, reliable and cost-effective manner. DDN customers include many of the world's leading financial services firms and banks, healthcare and life science organizations, manufacturing and energy companies, government and research facilities, and web and cloud service providers. For more information, follow us on twitter: @ddn_limitless, go to www.ddn.com or call 1-800-837-2298.
Press Relations at DDN
PR@ddn.com
About Nexenta
Nexenta is the original market maker and leader in Software-Defined Storage (SDS) for multi-cloud-focused enterprises and 5G and IoT-driven telcos and SPs; with nearly 3,000 customers, 300 partners, 50 patents, and nearly 2,000 petabytes of storage capacity under management. Nexenta uniquely integrates its platform-agnostic software-only innovation with strong "open source" community collaboration. Nexenta flexibly enables a wide variety of legacy, enterprise, 5G and IoT-driven telco and next-gen cloud-native apps, on certified cloud platform, protocol and hardware infrastructures to power the most cost/performant multi-cloud data centers. Nexenta portfolio is 100% software-based that can be used as a "Bare-Metal Hardware Appliance," as a "Virtual Storage Software Appliance (VSA)," on a virtual machine or container, or as multi-cloud-based "Software as a Service (SAAS)." Nexenta provides enterprises with total freedom and flexibility via its industry-leading multi-cloud software innovation, multi-channel collaboration, distribution, service and support, globally.
Press Relations at Nexenta by DDN
pr@nexenta.com
©2019 All rights reserved. DDN Storage and Tintri by DDN are trademarks owned by DataDirect Networks. Nexenta is a trademark of Nexenta Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
#EXA5 raises the bar for #AI and #HPC environments with new features, additional security, greater reliability and… https://t.co/kn68Wo7Esq about 8 hours ago


Deborah P. Brown speaks to students at Campion Student Center.
You've seen the viral videos. Young people at a party put what looks like a USB thumb drive to their lips, then pull away, when they realize it really is a USB thumb drive. They had thought it was a Juul, the distinctively shaped and most popular e-cigarette in the country.
The videos are meant to be funny. Deborah P. Brown, M.S. '87, the Chief Mission Officer of the American Lung Association, isn't laughing.
The FDA report, which came out just an hour before Brown's talk, was startling, with use among high schoolers jumping nearly 80% and almost 50% among middle schoolers in the past year alone. The number of young people using e-cigarettes increased by 1.5 million people, to 3.6 million total, in a single year.
"These data shock my conscience," FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said in a statement that proposes increased regulation of the products, which were introduced a decade ago as ways to help adults break their smoked tobacco habit. Instead, studies suggest, they have served as a new channel to hook young people on nicotine — and the data shows adults who use e-cigarettes are more likely to continue smoking.
It's against this backdrop that Juul, which is responsible for more than half of all e-cigarette sales and a great deal of the spike in e-cigarette use among youth, announced earlier this week that the brand will discontinue the sale of flavored products (except for mint and menthol) and social media ads as ways to combat the increase in young vapers.
Brown said she hopes the FDA will be foreceful in protecting people from dangerous products.
Brown says young people are particularly susceptible, and vulnerable, to e-cigarettes' marketing efforts.
Studies have shown that nicotine can have adverse effects on the brains of young people.
That's why the Lung Association is calling for a serious overhaul of the e-cigarette market. In addition to stopping the sale of all flavored products, it is requesting that the FDA restrict marketing aimed at younger demographics, prohibit online sales until safeguards are installed to prevent sales to children and enforce current rules prohibiting the sale of new or changed products after August 8, 2016, without prior agency review.
The mission of the Lung Association bears a special importance to Brown, who has worked there since 1981.
Research funded by the Lung Association has aided in the treatment her family members and many others have received.
Now, after almost four decades and many different positions, Brown, of Kennett Square, credits Saint Joseph's as the bedrock of her career.


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JSPG and GHFutures2030 LAUNCH 2022 CALL FOR PAPERS AND COMPETITION ON Strengthening Youth-centered Policy and Governance of Digital Transformations in Health
GHFutures2030
Whitney Gray
whitney.gray@graduateinstitute.ch
Journal of Science Policy & Governance
André Porter
communications@sciencepolicyjournal.org
WASHINGTON, DC (April 7, 2022) - The Journal of Science Policy & Governance (JSPG) and The Lancet and Financial Times Commission on Governing health futures 2030: Growing up in a digital world (GHFutures2030) are pleased to announce a call for papers and competition focused on Strengthening Youth-centered Policy and Governance of Digital Transformations in Health.
Read the call for submissions
Students, post-doctoral researchers, policy fellows, early career researchers and young professionals from around the world are invited to submit policy briefs, policy analyses, position papers, technology assessments and other articles addressing bold and innovative policy ideas for governing health futures in reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and achieving Health For All. Submission deadline: August 21, 2022.
"Working alongside youth in co-creating futures that improve the health and wellbeing of the next generation is a central tenet of The Lancet and Financial Times Commission report on Governing health futures 2030: Growing up in a digital world (GHFutures2030). We are eager to see how this partnership with JSPG develops into a Special Issue that can provide space for young people to improve their research, writing, and policy publishing in the field of digital transformations in health," said Dr. Anurag Agrawal and Prof. Ilona Kickbusch, co-chairs of the GHFutures2030 Commission.
In its October 2021 report, The Lancet and Financial Times Commission argued that governance of digital transformations must be grounded in 'Health For All' values and focused on harnessing data and digital technologies to tackle global health challenges and improve equitable health outcomes. For children and young people to truly have agency with respect to digital technologies and approaches for which they are the intended end-users or beneficiaries, they need to be enfranchised and empowered to participate – beyond just being loosely engaged – in every step of the way from research to implementation.
"Early career voices are critical to the future of our society, in particular as it relates to designing global health systems for the benefit of all. Through this Special Issue in partnership with the GHFutures2030 Commission, JSPG is thrilled to highlight and elevate innovative policy and governance approaches to future health systems from students and early career trainees around the world. We look forward to publishing bold ideas from the next generation at the convergence of digital health, artificial intelligence, and universal health coverage for children and young people worldwide," said Dr. Adriana Bankston, JSPG CEO and Managing Publisher.
Accepted articles will be entered into a policy paper competition following peer review. A committee of experts in digital health policies, including the GHFutures2030 Commissioners and Secretariat members, will select the top three winning articles. First, second and third place article winners will have the opportunity to present at a global digital health event in 2023 and be interviewed on GHFutures2030 Voices of Digital Health podcast.
Leading up to the submission deadline, JSPG and the GHFutures2030 Commission will organize a series of training sessions to provide prospective authors with opportunities to practice policy writing, and to inspire and empower them with expert perspectives on digital health policies to inform their submissions to the Special Issue.
Register for special issue events
About JSPG
The Journal of Science Policy & Governance (JSPG) is an international, open access peer-reviewed publication managed by and for students, policy fellows, and young scholars in science, technology, and innovation policy. JSPG publishes high-quality articles covering the widest range of topics in formats that are accessible to policymakers. Since 2011, JSPG has served as a vehicle for students and early career researchers to bolster their research and writing credentials in science policy. Visit sciencepolicyjournal.org and follow on Twitter @SciPolJournal to learn more.
About GHFutures2030 Commission
The Lancet and Financial Times Commission on Governing Health Futures 2030: Growing up in a digital world was established in October 2019 to deliver a clear set of recommendations on the governance of digital health, artificial intelligence, and universal health coverage. The Commission report was published in October 2021. It calls for a radical rethink on harnessing the power of digital technologies for our future health and sets out a new approach to digital transformations that promote equitable, affordable and universal improvements to health. The Commission is comprised of nineteen Commissioners representing a wide range of sectors, expertise, and backgrounds. The Commission is supported by the Secretariat which is hosted at the Global Health Centre of the Graduate Institute in Geneva, Switzerland. Visit governinghealthfutures2030.org and follow on Twitter @GHFutures2030 to learn more.
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Diana Abad, Keeping Balance: On Desert and Propriety, Ontos, 2007, 202pp., $112.95 (hbk), ISBN 9783938793183.
Abad points out that Feinberg's seminal paper came out in 1963, and goes on to say: "That raises the question of why, in the more than 40 years since, nobody has ventured to follow the lead [given by Feinberg] I have pointed out in the last section, that desert and propriety are related, and tried to solve this puzzle" (p.21). The reply given is that this is due to the overwhelming influence of John Rawls, who shifted the moral and political debate toward the notion of fairness, and (mistakenly, in Abad's view) was thought to have discredited desert.
After presenting a preliminary account of her view, which relates desert to fittingness, in Part 2 of her book Abad searches for the meaning of propriety and desert in an admirably broad selection of sources, including Roderick Chisholm, Samuel Clarke, Richard Price, William Wollaston, and Immanuel Kant. Her own account of desert is this: "to deserve something means that it is appropriate that one get it because one is or has done something fitting" (p.9). She distinguishes between what is fitting and what is appropriate: her favorite example of the fitting is that of a broken bowl: the shards of the bowl fit together, but it is not necessarily required or appropriate that the bowl be reconstructed. Appropriateness, by contrast, is exemplified by a musical illustration: "the eighth note is fitting to the first seven of the major scale already played, and furthermore, it is required as well" (p.143).
In Part 3 of her book, Abad applies her understanding of desert to two test cases, retributive justice and moral residue (in moral dilemmas). She does not discuss in a thorough way the metaphysical grounding of desert, but what she does say is certainly striking: "this concept of desert has a high metaphysical price: first, it presupposes propriety, that is, it presupposes incomplete states of affairs that require completion; and second, it presupposes Platonic Forms" (p.148). The book concludes by giving "An explanation for the persistence of the concept of desert against all odds", an explanation that Abad attributes to Kant: "we human beings simply work that way that [sic] propriety is important to us, and that we must hope for the world to be in balance" (p.187).
Abad correctly points out that desert has been relatively neglected in recent philosophy, and that further work is required. I also agree that central aspects of our moral universe cannot be explicated without the notion of desert. Hence I welcome this addition to the literature. Yet, the discussion suffers from several problems. Take, first, the discussion of Rawls on desert. One of the major points of contention is whether the desert basis itself requires to be deserved. Rawls says that pre-institutional desert cannot be the basis for a fair system of justice, for no one deserves her native talents, nor the social influences that mold her in utilizing those talents. But all that Abad says in response is that "This argument is absurd: it is wholly implausible that we cannot ascribe to ourselves anything we do that depends on our native endowments. It is enough, as Nozick rightly says, to have them and to use them" (p.23). One does not have to be a hard determinist to see that Abad's certainty is too quick.
Much of the book is taken with a discussion of earlier historical views; they, however, are not systematically exposited and connected but rather serve as material for Abad to sift through, towards the view she argues for. This view, the purported meaning of desert, is surely the purpose of the book. But, regrettably, I find it somewhat trivial. "[T]o deserve something means that it is appropriate that one get it because one is or has done something fitting" is rather commonsensical, and indeed roughly what one would find in a good dictionary.
I find this point obvious. It is a pity that Abad did not mention here Geoff Cupit's book Justice as Fittingness (Oxford University Press 1999).
The trouble, it seems, is that Abad is so concerned with keeping her distance from the many complex questions taken up in the contemporary debate, and remains only with the question of the definition of desert, that her work becomes somewhat barren and uninteresting. Take, for example, the relationship between desert and responsibility. One need not see all of desert as being conditional on responsibility, but were Abad to explore the conceptual and normative relationship among the two, she would have been able to say much more about the typical relationships between fittingness, propriety and desert. After all, we do have detailed and interesting stories as to why the innocent deserve no punishment at all, or why it might sometimes be fitting to mitigate the punishment of the guilty. These moral stories, which mostly have to do with the absence of responsibility or with its diminished nature, tell us why it would be inappropriate to inflict any punishment on the innocent; or to inflict a level of punishment that neither fits the crime nor reflects the circumstances surrounding it, even on the guilty. Such substantive discussions in moral theory (or the equivalents, concerning a-moral desert) would have enabled Abad to say much more than she does, and to consider more options than the Platonic Forms.


Infusing a captivating preppy spirit into their sports-inspired staples, Gant introduces the Barstripe Polo Shirt. Woven from pure cotton in a pique weave, it works a half-button down closure fashioned with light pearlescent buttons for a refined polish, alongside the brand's signature logo embroidered onto the chest. A perfect casual option to wear with chinos.
Piqué woven finish, short sleeves, polo collar, button fastenings, embroidered logo detail, side vents, contrast trims.


Brit dark rockers PEARL HANDLED REVOLVER return to the fold with an engrossing album and track. The foursome have just revealed a lyric video for Machine Gun, which is lifted from their compelling new album, Fantasy Reigns, out Friday 5th July.
PEARL HANDLED REVOLVER have travelled a long way to get to 2019. Over the last decade, they've had their fair share of escapades. Their four EPs, two live albums and three studio albums chart a journey from the limits of primal blues to blackened psychedelic soul music, via unlikely liaisons between cult film scores and bare bones Stoner Rock. Their aim is to get their fans feet moving, while their heads slowly succumb to an awareness of the madness induced by the modern world.
To date, the quartet have pricked ears and garnered much praise from a slew of notable outlets, namely: Classic Rock Magazine, Fireworks, Powerplay, Rhythm Magazine, Blues Magazine, Sound on Sound, Louder Than War and The Obelisk. Besides an impressive body of recorded work, PEARL HANDLED REVOLVER have also widely toured, sharing stages with everyone from The Black Crowes, The Blockheads, My Baby, Hawkwind, Focus, Uriah Heep, 10CC, Don Airey & Friends and Stray.
Now with a nod, a wink and a disclaimer stating that they hope you are wearing loose fitting clothing, they proudly present their fourth LP, Fantasy Reigns. Self-produced by the band, it is their most expansive, singular album to date. It is a soundtrack for both the dancefloor and the dark corners of a club, where release and catharsis can be found in the relentless motion of dance, the rhythms of conversation, shared ideas, and the spark and crackle of neurons vibrating in inner space.
Fantasy Reigns unleashes an intoxicating blend of psychedelic rock, dance dynamics, loose limbed grooves and hallucinatory storytelling to ignite, as the band suggest, "an escape from the lies we build around ourselves, the lies we're told and the lies we would rather swallow than face".


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Working on the Front Lines of Cybersecurity
Friday, Nov 1, 2013
ARTICLE: Almost every day there is something in the news about a computer hacker obtaining sensitive information. Whether these cyber-attacks are the work of lone individuals or sophisticated organizations, the end result can be devastating. In fact, it has been estimated that such intrusions cost the nation's businesses more than $114 billion every year.
Is Human Error Biggest Cybersecurity Vulnerability?
ARTICLE: In January 1986, the world's first computer virus for MS-DOS was unleashed. Written by two Pakistani brothers, Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi, the "Brain" as it was later coined, affected IBM PC computers by replacing the boot sector of a floppy disk with a copy of the virus. While the attack was intended to protect against piracy of the brothers' medical software (it included their contact information so authorized users could reach out for "vaccination"), the world was put on alert.
Excelsior's New MOOC: An Introduction to Cybersecurity
Saturday, Nov 16, 2013
ARTICLE: A new free, Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) launching in early 2014 from The National Cybersecurity Institute (NCI) at Excelsior College aims to introduce educators, professionals and the general public to the evolving field of cyber operations and security.
SECURITY - AnalystPerspectives Weekly Scan from the week ending January 31, 2014
ARTICLE: This issue of AnalystPerspectives Weekly Scan covers analyst commentary from the week ending January 31, 2014.
SECURITY - AnalystPerspectives - week ending February 14, 2014.
ARTICLE: AnalystPerspectives Weekly Scan covers analyst commentary from the week ending February 14, 2014.
SECURITY - AnalystPerspectives week ending February 21, 2014.
ARTICLE: This issue of AnalystPerspectives Weekly Scan covers analyst commentary from the week ending February 21, 2014.
SECURITY - Heartbleed: How Did It Escape Detection For So Long?
ARTICLE: The past few days have been choc-a-block with discussions of Heartbleed–what it is and how it works, and what the average user should do about it. (For the former, here is a particularly understandable explanation. The answer to the latter: wait until sites are fixed, and THEN change your password. If it's a high-value site, changing your password before the patch has been installed and a new key/certificate has been generated is counterproductive, as it may make your new password more vulnerable rather than less. Ed Felten provides good advice both for the average user and for website operators on what they should do.
SECURITY - AnalystPerspectives Weekly Scan
Friday, Sep 5, 2014
ARTICLE: This issue of AnalystPerspectives Weekly Scan covers analyst commentary from the week ending August 29, 2014.
SECURITY - Ensuring Privacy in a Personal Health Record System
VIDEO: Guest editor Alf Weaver interviews Jingquan Li about his article "Ensuring Privacy in a Personal Health Record System" and balancing personalization, privacy, and security, from Computer's February 2015 issue on Computing in Healthcare.
SECURITY - The Malware of Things
ARTICLE: It's easy to get frustrated with the security problems we all face with our connected devices: shouldn't a PC/laptop/phone/tablet/whatever be secure by design? Is it really that hard?
SECURITY - Cryptographer's Challenge: Keeping Genetic Secrets While Advancing Genetic Research
ARTICLE: Kristin Lauter is solving a problem you may not even know you have: She's working to keep your most personal data private and secure.
SECURITY - Accidents Will Happen
Monday, Apr 6, 2015
VIDEO: In "Accidents Will Happen," Grier discusses self-driving cars, automotive information systems, and their tremendous security risks--illustrating how we tend to think about functionality first and consider security problems only as an afterthought.
SECURITY - 6 Steps to Prevent Your Business from Being Hacked
Wednesday, Apr 1, 2015
ARTICLE: Cybersecurity is essential for business owners in 2015. There have been numerous security breaches of major companies just in the last few months, including Anthem Insurance Agency, Sony, and Target.
SECURITY - Code Hunt: creating a community with a game
ARTICLE: Launched a year ago, Code Hunt is a coding game that challenges players first to deduce a hidden problem from clues presented as unit tests and then to write a program to solve it. The game has been enormously successful, attracting more than 150,000 players from around the world and achieving amazing stickiness—99 percent of players return to the game within a week.
SECURITY - Analyst Commentary
Sunday, Jun 28, 2015
Telemedicine Enhancing Health Wearables
BLOG POST: While wearable health tech is still in its early days, its popularity is growing and the general public is beginning to understand the benefits. And this bodes well for the continued growth of telemedicine.
ARTICLE: This issue of AnalystPerspectives Weekly Scan covers analyst commentary from the week ending July 03, 2015.
SECURITY - Keeping the Wolves at Bay: Strategies to Protect Against the New DDoS
ARTICLE: What do connected cars, smart appliances and self-adjusting thermostats have in common? They are part of the rapidly growing Internet of Things (IoT). Far more than the latest catchphrase or short-lived tech trend, IoT is a real phenomenon that is here to stay, offering greater convenience to consumers and untold opportunities for businesses.
SECURITY - Better Decisions through Big Data
ARTICLE: Companies and governments increasingly rely on 'big data' to operate efficiently and competitively. Analytics and security must keep pace. What research underpins the latest big data-enabled advances?
SECURITY - IEEE Computer Society and AT&T joined together to create an Encryption Challenge, and We Have a Winner who Cracked the Code!
ARTICLE: Matthew Williams solved the #crackthecode challenge which was based on the 72nd anniversary of the game-changing Sigsaly encryption system launched in WWII.
SECURITY - Practical Strategies for Enhancing Your Company's Cyber Security
ARTICLE: Cyber attacks are proliferating at an incredible rate and now is the time for business owners and IT professionals to protect their organizations if they want to avoid catastrophes.
SECURITY - Breaking Down the Risk of Industrial Control Systems Security
ARTICLE: RSA President Amit Yoran's has released predictions for 2016, which include the following thoughts about the increasing risk in our collective industrial control systems (ICS) security:
Why We Need to Improve EHR Software Systems
ARTICLE: Some of the patient care technology advances have not accomplished the promised end results and are in desperate need of improvement. Topping the list of needed replacements is today's electronic health records (EHRs) software systems.
Monday, Feb 22, 2016
SECURITY - IT Support Staff Doesn't (and Shouldn't) Care About Your Privacy
Tuesday, Mar 8, 2016
ARTICLE: There's one area where most people don't think about privacy too much, and that's at work. And that's because this issue has been settled for a while. When using the web, email, or other services at work, there really isn't much privacy, especially from the IT workers tasked to support and protect these business systems.
SECURITY - 5 Tips to Processing Payments Remotely
ARTICLE: Today's busy professionals rarely sit at a desk for eight hours. Work is conducted in cafes, while waiting at the airport, or before leaving the house for the day. Mobile devices have freed business leaders to travel across the country and even to the other side of the globe. However, for entrepreneurs who don't have a bookkeeping team back home, processing incoming and outgoing invoices in a timely manner can be challenging.
Cognitive Computing Set to Make Significant Inroads in Healthcare Industry
BLOG POST: The global healthcare cognitive computing market is poised for explosive growth. Market research firm Grand View Research predicts it will top more than $5 billion by 2022. Grand Review Research also says significant factors driving the market are rapid growth in the scientific database, demand for personalized healthcare, and the need to reduce healthcare expenditure levels.
SECURITY - Speaker Steven Bay Presents "Edward Snowden and Defending Against the Insider Threat"
Sunday, Sep 18, 2016
ARTICLE: IEEE Computer Society Rockstars of Cybersecurity: Threats and Counter Measures Symposium September 13, 2016, Seattle,Washington Speaker Steven Bay Presents "Edward Snowden and Defending Against the Insider Threat" Steven Bay was Edward Snowden's boss. This is his personal account of how Edward Snowden was hired, behaved, how he got access to files and suggestion on how you can protect your company or organization.
SECURITY - Art of Hacking
Wednesday, Oct 12, 2016
ARTICLE: Protect your organization from hackers by learning to think like them. Now, for the first time, NotSoSecure has joined forces with IEEE Computer Society to create the first e-learning courses with The Art of Hacking certification course. You and your staff can take these courses where you are and at your own pace, getting hands-on, real-world training that you can put to work immediately.
SECURITY - Virtual Cards Today and Virtual Card Payments in the Near Future
ARTICLE: Today's virtual (credit) cards are optimizing safety, allowing for easier employee travel reimbursement, and helping everyone avoid credit card fraud. You can set a limit, an expiration date, and trust that the virtual credit card number is unique from any physical credit cards. Yes, you can only use them for online purchases, but swiping cards is usually reserved for smaller purchases anyway. Virtual cards are rapidly changing how we think of payment processing, but many experts agree virtual cards are really a gateway and transition into virtual card payments of the future.
SECURITY - When Surveillance Is The Way In: New Devices Create Security Gaps
Monday, Nov 7, 2016
ARTICLE: Today, smart homes are considered to be the pinnacle of security, but are these new devices causing more harm than good? Though we may think we're protecting our homes, many people are inadvertently creating new avenues for cyber criminals to enter. These new systems are full of gaps, but unlike with traditional fences and locks, we often can't see the spaces where criminals are getting through, making them that much harder to thwart.
SECURITY - Analyst Perspectives Weekly Scan
ARTICLE: ast week's U.S. Presidential election certainly had the eyes of the world looking on. Analysts had plenty to say about the election, but the discussion was geared mostly toward cybersecurity and data.
Wednesday, Dec 7, 2016
ARTICLE: The 2016 U.S. presidential election and President-elect Trump continue to make headlines this week, particularly when it comes to security. You can read about them, along with other news in the Security & Privacy section: Cybersecurity in President Trump's America: The first 100 days | Cloud Security Allicance - Mon, 28 Nov 2016 |Katie Lewin
SECURITY - How Technology Is Improving Campus Security
ARTICLE: College campuses aren't inherently more dangerous than other areas of the country, but with so many young people packed in one place, security is a natural concern. Campus shootings and attacks, rape culture, and other high-profile incidents are putting a spotlight on the importance of campus security, and colleges across the country are looking to new forms of technology to help address student and parent worries.
SECURITY - All email should be encrypted
ARTICLE: Dark Web, Deep Web, Deepnet, Invisible Web, Hidden Web, Dark Internet. What's the average computer user to know? You can start by understanding there are dark places and dark minds out there, criminals who would hack into your internet devices and steal or corrupt your information. It's why all email should be encrypted.
The "Sound" of New Medical Treatments
BLOG POST: A few years ago, while visiting the University of Virginia, my friend Dr. Alan Matsumoto introduced me to some new medical technology being investigated to treat uterine fibroids (benign tumors of the uterus) with focused ultrasound therapy and thus avoid the need for hysterectomy and preservation of the patient's fertility.
SECURITY - 4 Technologies That Could Pave the Future of Cybersecurity
ARTICLE: Cybersecurity has come a long way over the decades, but hackers and cybersecurity experts are constantly trying to one-up each other in terms of technological sophistication and preparedness. Every time we take a major step forward in terms of reliable security, cybercriminals are there to match us.
SECURITY - 8 Common Phishing Attacks And How To Protect Against Them
ARTICLE: What Phishers Do You need to accept that these scammers might just be smarter than you, at least with respect to the ability to conspire and corrupt.
SECURITY - How Often Are Americans Really Hacked?
ARTICLE: Most people in the United States rely on technology to do their work, exchange messages, and even handle their financial transactions. The fear of being hacked, or having their personal information vulnerable and/or stolen, is prominent and played up by both technology companies and the media.
A Sneak Peek at Next Gen Military Robotics
BLOG POST: It's no secret that robots will play an increasingly important role in military warfare. A new generation of threats has paved the way for enhanced capabilities, such as endurance, data processing, and communications. Hostile nations, cross-border insurgents, pirates, and terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS have created a need for defense systems capable of executing surveillance and intelligence gathering missions.
SECURITY - Critical Corporate Cyber Security Risks
Wednesday, Sep 27, 2017
BLOG POST: An organization's critical assets may be exposed due to malicious wifi that can lead to a security breach, or perhaps fall prey to a malware attack. Whatever the size of the company, an enterprise may lose precious data and incur huge expenses to get back on track.
SECURITY - 5 Possible Solutions for Workplace Security Threats in the Age of IoT
BLOG POST: IoT isn't inherently more dangerous than any other kind of technology. It doesn't suffer from inherently inferior security standards or firewalls, but there are a few vulnerabilities that, by the nature of IoT, make devices in its network a potential target.
SECURITY - How to Respond to a Data Breach
Wednesday, Oct 4, 2017
BLOG POST: Data breaches don't have to be massive or heavily publicized to be destructive; in fact, much smaller data breaches can be even more harmful, since it's harder to spread the information your consumers need to take protective measures.
SECURITY - Careers in Computer and Internet Security
BLOG POST: In the October 2017 issue of ComputingEdge, we asked Kate Netkachova and Robin Bloomfield about career opportunities in computer and Internet security.
SECURITY - Are Home Security Apps and Tech as Safe As They Promise?
BLOG POST: We're entering the generation of the internet-of-things (IoT), where all our devices and appliances are connected to the cloud, and we can remotely access and control just about anything with our smartphones. But are these "secure" advancements really as secure as they promise?
SECURITY - The Solution to Hacks and Breaches: Stronger Links in the Chain
BLOG POST: So how is it that major national corporations, with decades of experience and billions of dollars of buying power, can let massive security breaches happen? And more importantly, what can we do, both inside and outside of these companies, to prevent them in the future?
SECURITY - How Cybersecurity Regulations for Medical Devices Is About to Change
Sunday, Jan 14, 2018
BLOG POST: With the increasing sophistication and availability of medical devices, cybersecurity is becoming an especially important concern for the healthcare industry. But why is it that medical devices are so vulnerable, and should we be doing more to regulate their development and ongoing management?
SECURITY - Making the Case for Better Website Security This Year
BLOG POST: You don't need a degree in cyber security to see just how serious cyber attacks are for small businesses and ecommerce websites. The volume of attacks continues to rise, and businesses need to take every precaution to stay safe.
SECURITY - The 3 Best Cybersecurity Solutions for Enterprises
BLOG POST: Cybersecurity is a threat for everyone but is especially dangerous for businesses as the penetration of a business's database could threaten an innumerable amount people's data. It is very imperative that a business conduct itself in the most secure way possible to avoid a breach of their internal systems.
SECURITY - Cybersecurity: Educating Employees
BLOG POST: In this age, we will see the number of attacks increase dramatically and the proficiency of the attacks increase as well. However, even with this surge, we will still see the expansion of the internet and the access to devices expand dramatically. This means that, more than ever, we must be prepared to defend ourselves against digital attacks. These can come in the form of malware, brute force attacks and everything in between that try to steal our data and create adware problems.
SECURITY - Why Cybersecurity Is More Important Than Ever
BLOG POST: Cyber security is important -- now more than ever. It is more apparent than ever that technology is gradually taking over every facet of our lives. Whether we are at home or travelling technology has some sort of involvement in our daily routine.
SECURITY - How You Can Prepare for Cyber Breaches
BLOG POST: In recent years, the cumulative amount of high profile breaches has made the front page of the newspaper a terrifying read. Almost everyone has heard of the Equifax and Target breaches that leaked millions of people's data for anyone and everyone to grab for free.
SECURITY - Why Cybersecurity Will Change the Internet of Things
BLOG POST: Anything and everything can fit a processing unit inside of it and everyone and everything is connected to the internet. One key drawback of having all of these systems constantly connected to the internet is the threat of cyber attacks.
SECURITY - Why We Desperately Need Better Cybersecurity
BLOG POST: The potential of the Internet of Things, as you might assume, is positively staggering as an entirely interconnected world would mean unprecedented access to data that can be used to shape the future.
SECURITY - A Look at the Latest in Smart-Home Security and Automation
BLOG POST: Home security has been an area of great interest among technology companies for several decades. But in the past five to seven years, new technology has taken this industry to unprecedented new heights: totally revolutionizing the gadgets, systems, and devices that protect homeowners from external threats.
SECURITY - Email Archiving: EMEA Focused on Functionality, North America on Litigation
BLOGPOST: In June 2012 Aberdeen Group conducted a global survey of nearly 180 enterprises and their deployments of technologies designed to support data storage, including e-discovery, Cloud storage, and data archiving. Aberdeen's analysis of 87 companies with an email archiving initiative found a distinct difference between the email archiving programs in North America (NA) and those in Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA): the primary objective in North American email archiving programs is to prepare for litigation, while the primary objective in EMEA is to reduce IT operating costs.
SECURITY - Splitting Secrets — "Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead"
Monday, Oct 15, 2012
BLOGPOST: "Three may keep a secret," observed Benjamin Franklin, in his Poor Richard's Almanack, "If two of them are dead."Instead of sharing the same secret among multiple parties, what if there was a way to divide a secret among multiple parties without ever disclosing the secret itself? This is the basic idea, announced this week at RSA Conference Europe 2012, behind RSA Distributed Credential Protection, which is designed to eliminate a single point of compromise by scrambling, randomizing, and splitting sensitive data across multiple locations.
SECURITY - Evernote, 50M Passwords, and the Law of Demos
Monday, Mar 25, 2013
BLOGPOST: When visiting my mom, who does not live close by, I try to play Geek Squad and help her with any open technology issues. Most recently, we set up a new Wi-Fi service for her new Windows 8 laptop (that's right, my mom has newer capabilities than I do).
SECURITY - Endpoint Security and the DSD Top 4: One Size Does Not Fit All
BLOGPOST: Have you been hearing lately, as I have, about the "DSD Top 4"? This refers to the Australian Government Department of Defence's Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), and its recently updated publication called "Strategies to Mitigate Targeted Cyber Intrusions".
SECURITY - Two-Factor Authentication: What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been
BLOGPOST: If you're not old enough to relate to the musical reference in the title, you may also not be old enough to know that two-factor authentication didn't just become fashionable in the last couple of months – as you might otherwise surmise based on announcements (both actual, and rumored) by Twitter, Microsoft, WordPress, Apple, Dropbox, Facebook, Google and others. In ge
SECURITY - Here, FIDO! If We Build Stronger Authentication, Will Consumers Come?
BLOGPOST: As a follow-up to my recent blog on Two-Factor Authentication: What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been (6 May 2013), about the flurry of activity around two-factor authentication in consumer scenarios, I want to call your attention to FIDO.
SECURITY - The Asymmetry of Information Security – Part 3
PODCAST: In Part 1 (25 July 2013), we looked at the underground market value of stolen healthcare credentials (about $20 each) – and the even higher prices commanded by value-added packaging options called fullz (about $500) and kitz (between $1,200-1,300) – as compiled by the research team at the Dell SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit. In Part 2 (1 August 2013), we looked beyond healthcare at the underground market value of a wide variety of stolen credentials – which shows a range from as little as $1, to more than $1,000. In this Part 3, I aim to give us at least a little bit of calibration on how the payoff for criminals grows as they move along the fraud value chain, by using one public example.
SECURITY - The Red Zone in Security: Moving from Enablement to Use
BLOGPOST: At the Trusted Computing Conference last week – where I had the pleasure of moderating a couple of panel discussions – the head of the NSA's Information Assurance Directorate, Debora Plunkett, announced her intent to sign an advisory recommending the use of Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs) "later this week".
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING - Technology Enablers for Better Cloud Archiving
PODCAST: The decreasing cost of Cloud-based storage has made long term storage, or archiving files, financially affordable. In January 2013, Aberdeen surveyed 123 organizations to learn how they use the Public Cloud as part of their IT infrastructure, including a variation of Cloud storage – Cloud archiving. This report focuses on the technology enablers (related computing tools) that lead to successful Cloud archiving programs.
SECURITY - Is @UnifyCo Unified? Is #ProjectAnsible the Answer?
PODCAST: Today Unify (the next-generation communications company formerly known as Siemens Enterprise Communications) made the surprise announcement that their CEO Hamid Akhavan is being replaced by Dean Douglas, currently President and CEO of enterprise technology distributor Westcon Group Inc.
SECURITY - When Security Breaches Hit Close to Home: Ransomware
PODCAST: In the small town of Greenland, New Hampshire (population 3,653, based on the 2012 US Census estimates), on the day after Christmas 2013, a town employee opened an email indicating that they had received a voice message from AT&T … and infected the computers at the Town Hall with malicious software known as CryptoLocker.
SECURITY - RSA Conference 2014: Product Roadmap for the Information Security Industry
BLOGPOST: In RSA Conference 2014: The Bully, the Nerdy Kid, and the Rumble That Didn't Happen (6 March 2014), I noted that among the dozen high-profile keynotes, just four of them even mentioned the escalating tension between the role of surveillance in our government's mission to defend us, and in its mission to protect our privacy and civil liberties – and one of those was from the government itself.
SECURITY - Security Follies, Part 2: Video Surveillance and the Traveling Public
BLOGPOST: "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Hawaiian Airlines Flight 45. Our 2,300 mile flight from San Jose to Maui will take about five and a half hours, and we'll reach a maximum cruising altitude of about 38,000 feet." I wonder if the 15-year old boy who was stowed away in the wheel well for the landing gear of the Boeing 767 heard this announcement. Somewhat miraculously, he survived the flight. This case should be the poster child for the difference between video surveillance (human monitoring, analysis and response to video data as it is being captured and displayed), and video analytics (automated monitoring and analysis of video data, to identify and track objects, to analyze motion, and most importantly to generate alerts on exceptions or abnormal events for humans to investigate).
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING - Interoperability Key to Success of Health Information Exchanges
BLOGPOST: So with my inaugural post, I wanted to talk about health information exchanges (HIE) – key technological advances, what's lacking, what are some of the advantages to doctors and patients, and more.
SECURITY - eBay, the World's Online Marketplace for Stolen Identities: 145M Accounts Compromised
BLOGPOST: Yet another compromise of millions of consumer records has been disclosed, in this case by eBay. A summary of the facts provided so far by the company, along with some parenthetical comments and observations from me: A "small number of employee login credentials" were compromised, allowing unauthorized access to eBay's corporate network.
UAE Making Significant Inroads in Utilizing Advanced Medical Technologies
PODCAST: The United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven states (Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ajman, Fujairah, Ras al Khaimah, Sharjah and Umm al Qaiwain) formed in 1971, has grown over the past 15 years to become one of the Middle East's most important economic centers. Concurrent with this phenomenal growth have been major advancements in the healthcare arena. In fact, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), the UAE ranked first in life expectancy in 2009 (78 years), had the lowest infant mortality rate and was ranked third in having the lowest adult mortality rate among other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.
CLOUD - Internet of Things Becoming a Healthcare Game Changer
BLOGPOST: The IoT is already resulting in significant changes in many areas of healthcare. To explore further, I reached out to a number of globally recognized IoT experts and posed a number of questions.
Telemedicine Boosting Healthcare in Rural Communities
PODCAST: Telemedicine has been around in some form for almost 40 years – and it's now increasingly becoming a cost-effective and indispensable tool for doctors, rural hospitals, and local and regional governmental agencies situated in rural areas.
SECURITY - Consumer Passwords Keep Falling, Like Domino's
PODCAST: Quick – how many times in the last couple of months have you been advised to change your password, because of a high-profile security breach or vulnerability? Let's see now … there was the highly sensationalized Heartbleed bug, which probably affected several sites that you use regularly. Then there was the breach at eBay, which compromised a database containing the passwords and personal information of 145 million subscribers.
NETWORKING - Barriers to Telehealth Adoption Slowly Coming Down
BLOGPOST: Telehealth. We've seen that word bandied about frequently. In brief, telehealth comprises not only physician-patient interactions but information and educational services that foster awareness of treatments, medical conditions, good health practices and diagnoses. And while telehealth is becoming more widespread, NTT DATA, a Tokyo-based IT services provider, indicated in its Trends in Telehealth white paper published earlier this year that "the healthcare industry is historically a late adopter of technology and this has proven to be a barrier to all new solutions that rely on technology."
INSIGHTS - Bringing Telemedicine to the Workplace
Thursday, Oct 2, 2014
BLOGPOST: While telemedicine in the workplace to date has been used more by large businesses, this is thankfully beginning to change as technology costs decrease and support increases. Businesses of all sizes are realizing that the benefits of telemedicine in the workplace are considerable: Ø Fewer expensive visits to the emergency room; Ø Better employee retention; Ø Reduced employee time away from the job. And some companies have particularly been proactive in introducing telemedicine in the workplace. Way back in 2011, noted Modern Healthcare, Cisco expanded its use of telemedicine to reach employees at other locations and to connect San Jose, CA-based workers to specialists.
INSIGHTS - How Telemedicine Can Help Treat Ebola and Other Infectious Diseases
BLOGPOST: While President Obama's naming last week of a new 'Ebola czar' (Ron Klain, a former White House advisor) to oversee the federal government's response to the outbreak, here and abroad, is a positive step, much more is needed to help combat the contagious disease. There are tools to treat Ebola and other infectious diseases remotely - in particular – telemedicine.
IBM Devops Solution Center
We have contributed to nearly every product Microsoft has shipped, including Kinect for Xbox, Cortana, cool free photography apps like Hyperlapse, and other programs that help secure your data in the cloud. We have world-renowned scientists at the forefront of machine learning, computer vision, speech, and artificial intelligence. Our external collaborations include efforts to prevent disease outbreaks and solve problems facing large cities such as traffic and pollution.


Post-Processing: Photoshop CS2; levels, shadows and highlights, unsharp mask Extra Info: A typical Chester County, PA horse farm seen just before sunset.
Mar 16, 2010 I had hoped this would finish higher. Unlike some of the bitterly cold days we have seen this year, this conveys a day with snow that I would enjoy.
Mar 14, 2010 Although absolutely sick of snow and looking forward to some nice spring weather, this shot appeals to me very much. I like the sweep of the soft shadow that directs the eye around the composition. A top three shot for me.
Mar 13, 2010 You captured the long shadows that I was looking for LOL. Nicely done.
Mar 12, 2010 There is so much about this that I like, the fence, the shadows, the virgin snow and cloud, and the geometric composition. Taken together, it does not carry the impact and drama that I would have expected but I cannot put a finger on why except that it may need a little sharpening to make it pop.


Greg Hardy, nicknamed "The Kraken" by his fans, gives a twenty minute interview on his intensity, how he could beat LeBron 1-on-1, and his daily life. Greg brings a feeling of fear from opposing teams OLs to the Panthers defensive line that hasn't been present since the days of Julius Peppers. Greg dawns cat-claw black war paint every game and so far this season has accumulated an impressive thirty tackles and seven sacks, which is far from his pre-season prediction of fifty, but there are still a few more games left to attain that goal. Hardy is a fan favorite and is active on both twitter and Reddit. As an Ole Miss DE stand-out, Hardy was projected to go in the first round early in his collegiate career. But, due to injuries, fell to later rounds where he was claimed by the Panthers and has helped transformed a rag-tag Carolina D to a top tier line.


A new round of Russian hacking attempts on sites belonging to American organizations has been uncovered ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
Microsoft said Monday it recently discovered and disabled several fake websites designed to trick visitors and allow a hacking group connected to the Russian government to hack into their computers. Two of the fake sites were designed to mimic two American conservative organizations — Hudson Institute and the International Republican Institute — while three other domains were intended to resemble official US Senate sites.
Microsoft said a hacking group linked to the Russian military and known as Strontium was behind the spoofing campaign. The group, more widely known as "Fancy Bear" and APT 28, has also been linked to a series of hacks in recent years, including one in which emails and chat transcripts were stolen from the Democratic National Committee's computer network in 2016.
Microsoft reportedly found no evidence the fake domains were used in a successful hack. However, spoof sites often host malware designed to automatically infect visiting computers, stealing emails, documents and other sensitive information. After discovering the sites, Microsoft said it obtained a court order to move the domains to its own server to neutralize the threat — an approach the company has used 12 times in two years to shut down 84 fake websites linked to the group.
The discovery underscores the challenges faced as the US tries to avoid a repeat of the 2016 election, in which Russian actors used social media to sow seeds of discord among Americans. Disinformation has long been a part of Russia's foreign policy strategy, and social media has allowed the trolling effort to expand on a viral scale. US intelligence has warned Congress that these campaigns will continue in future elections.
Microsoft's revelation comes roughly a month after US special counsel Robert Mueller filed charges against 12 Russian hackers connected to the cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election campaign. In February, the Justice Department indicted 13 Russian nationals and the Internet Research Agency, a group linked to Russian intelligence services, for a propaganda campaign spread across social media during the 2016 election.
Microsoft's moves are part of a concerted effort by some of the tech industry's most influential companies to head off foreign interference before it penetrates their platforms. Representatives from Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Oath, Snap and Twitter, met in April with representatives of the US intelligence community to discuss preparations for the midterm elections.
The US Justice Department has also instituted a new policy to inform Americans of foreign operations attempting to undermine confidence in US democracy. The government's plan is to notify US companies, private organizations and individuals when a hacking threat by foreign actors is detected.


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Technologies for Checking Outside Optical Distribution Equipment
Kenichi Nakazawa†, Toshikazu Yamane, Yoshitaka Enomoto,
and Noriyuki Araki
This article describes technologies for checking outside optical distribution equipment, which is being deployed in increasing quantities along with the expansion and diversification of optical services. These technologies are designed to reduce costs and improve checking performance.
NTT Access Network Service Systems Laboratories
Tsukuba-shi, 305-0805 Japan
The number of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) subscribers in Japan is increasing rapidly and exceeded 15 million in March 2009 [1]. The structure of the optical access network used to provide NTT's FTTH-based Internet protocol (IP) connection services, called FLET's Hikari, is shown schematically in Fig. 1. This optical equipment must operate efficiently in order to ensure good service quality. For this purpose, we are developing a water sensor module for detecting water penetration in underground closures. These modules enable the maintenance system to identify two or more water-penetrated underground closures along one fiber. We are also developing a technique for checking for optical filters installed in front of optical network units (ONUs) in optical fiber branches after an optical splitter in a passive optical network (PON) to distinguish between live (signal-carrying) and unused (non-signal-carrying or dark) fibers.
Fig. 1. Structure of optical access network providing FLET's Hikari.
2. Underground facility identification technologies for detecting water in cable joints
2.1 Water penetration detection technology and a related problem
Joins between lengths of optical fiber are made at closures. If water penetrates an underground closure over time, it can cause an increase in optical loss and degrade the fiber's mechanical strength. For this reason, each underground closure contains a water sensor module attached to the same maintenance-use optical fiber. The water sensor module and the detection mechanism are shown in Fig. 2. If water penetrates an underground closure, an absorbent material in the sensor module expands and applies a bending force to the maintenance fiber. As the absorbent material, polyacrylic acid was chosen because its performance and long-term reliability have been determined. The bending force induces bending loss, which can be detected in the power level of the backscattered signal with an optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR). Moreover, the OTDR can determine the distance at which the bending loss occurs, so it is possible to identify which closure has a problem. Therefore, water penetration in all underground closures can be monitored by performing periodic tests with an optical fiber line testing system [2].
Fig. 2. Water detection in underground closures.
Currently, we use a test light with a wavelength of 1650 nm for the periodic test. However, the bending loss should not exceed the dynamic range of the OTDR when water has penetrated underground closures, and it is impossible to detect water in the underground closures at long distances. Moreover, it is difficult to identify a specific underground closure where water has penetrated using the OTDR if adjacent underground closures are too close together. This has a considerable influence on the promptness of repair work.
2.2 Optical loss control using new water sensor module
Our design for the new water sensor module is shown in Fig. 3. When water penetrates an underground closure containing a conventional water sensor module [2], the bending part of the module applies lateral force to the optical fiber as well as bending force. It is not easy to control the insertion loss caused by both these forces. In the new water sensor module, the region containing the bending parts incorporates stoppers, as shown Fig. 3, which can reduce the insertion loss caused by the lateral force. In addition, the bending radius of the bending part is smaller. By taking these measures, we were able to optimize the bending loss that occurs during water penetration.
Fig. 3. New water sensor module.
2.3 Marker for maintenance-use fiber
We examined the possibility of marking the maintenance-use fiber to facilitate the identification of water-penetrated underground closures during maintenance work. We chose to use the reflection method to identify the marker because we can use the conventional OTDR usually used for maintenance work including the periodic test and because the insertion loss caused by the marker has no influence on the OTDR's dynamic range. The marker that we have developed is shown in Fig. 4. It is almost the same size as a fiber protection sleeve so that it can be stored in the fiber storage tray of an underground closure. It has a fiber ribbon at each end and is inserted into the maintenance-use fiber by fusion splicing. It incorporates an optical fiber with a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) inscribed into it, and higher reflectivity than the popular MT connector is achieved by controlling the return loss. As a result, we were able to produce a way of marking the maintenance-use optical fiber.
Fig. 4. Marker.
2.4 Application of new water sensor module and marker
We evaluated the new water sensor module and marker before and after water penetration. The experimental setup and the measured OTDR traces are shown in Fig. 5. The total length of the optical fiber was 1866 m. Prototype water sensor modules were attached to the maintenance-use fiber in closures at three points, which were 532 m (Point A), 646 m (Point B), and 996 m (Point C) from the OTDR. The prototype marker was spliced in at point A because points A and B were close to each other. The wavelength of the test light was 1650 nm and the pulse width was 100 ns. From the OTDR traces in Fig. 5, we were able to detect both the water penetration locations (points B and C). Moreover, it was easy to determine that the cable joint at point B had been penetrated by water from the reflection from the marker at point A.
Fig. 5. Measured OTDR traces before and after water penetration.
3. Optical fiber line testing technique that checks for optical filters after an optical splitter in a PON
3.1 Problem
In recent years, the demand for broadband access services has increased throughout the world. FTTH is the most promising approach for providing these services because of its large capacity and cost effectiveness. These services are mainly provided using PON topologies, such as broadband, Gigabit capable, and Gigabit Ethernet (B-PON, G-PON, and GE-PON) [3]–[5]. Many optical fiber cables are being installed every day to meet the current demand. During the installation and maintenance of optical fiber communications networks, field engineers must first correctly identify a specific fiber from a bundle of fibers to avoid the incorrect cutting and/or connection of an optical fiber at a worksite. In particular, they must avoid cutting live fibers in order to maintain service reliability. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between live and unused fibers in fiber branches. An optical fiber identifier [6]–[8] that uses a non-destructive macrobending technique [9]–[10] is widely used as a convenient tool for identifying a specific fiber used for maintenance purposes. However it is difficult to identify an optical fiber in PONs that have optical splitters. This is because the optical power of the test light launched from a central office is distributed equally among the fiber branches by an optical splitter, so a conventional optical fiber identifier cannot identify a specific fiber. Nevertheless, field engineers need to be able to select unused fibers during cable installation or removal work. In this section, we describe a new technique for construction work performed to install optical lines for PON-based services and describe a novel measuring technique that checks for optical filters located in front of an ONU in fiber branches for PONs with optical splitters. The purpose is to determine whether an optical fiber is in use or not.
3.2 Optical fiber line testing system and optical filter characteristics
As a model of the PON access network with an optical fiber line testing system, we used the configuration shown in Fig. 1. Optical fiber line testing systems are installed to reduce construction and maintenance costs and to improve service reliability in PON systems [11]. They essentially consist of optical couplers, which introduce a test light into fiber lines in a central office, and optical filters, which are installed in front of an ONU and allow the communication light from an optical line terminal (OLT) to pass but cut off the test light. The optical filter is an FBG filter, which has wavelength-dependent characteristics for inline monitoring [12]–[13]. The center wavelength of the test light is 1650 ± 5 nm in accordance with ITU-T Recommendation L.41 [14]. The return loss spectrum of light reflected by the FBG filter is shown in Fig. 6. A test light with a wavelength of 1650 ± 5 nm is reflected strongly, but test lights at other wavelengths (e.g., 1630 nm and below) are hardly reflected at all. The wavelength dependency of test lights at these two wavelengths reflected by the filter can be utilized to determine whether or not a filter is present. Since a live fiber must have an optical filter to enable inline monitoring with an optical fiber line testing system, field engineers working on branches after an optical splitter can distinguish between live and unused fibers by knowing whether or not there is an optical filter at the end of the branch.
Fig. 6. Wavelength allocation of test lights.
3.3 Basic concept of the method
Our method recognizes the presence of an optical filter by detecting test lights reflected from filters in the branch after an optical splitter. Its configuration is shown in Fig. 7. This method involves generating test light and monitoring it using the non-destructive macrobending method used for an optical fiber identifier [8]–[9]. The light source module produces two wavelengths, namely primary wavelength (λp) and secondary wavelength (λs). The monitoring equipment consists of two photodetectors (PD1 and PD2) and a bender that lets us monitor the leaked optical power caused by macrobending. PD1 mainly detects test lights reflected at the far end of the fiber line while PD2 mainly detects test lights transmitted directly from the test light source. PD1 detects the optical powers at two wavelengths (λp and λs). By comparing the difference in the power levels at these two wavelengths, we can determine whether or not there is a filter at the end of the fiber line.
Fig. 7. Configuration for checking for an optical filter.
3.4 Optical filter checking tool
The prototype of our optical filter checking tool is shown in Fig. 8. The light source module generates light at 1650 and 1625 nm and operates on AC power or batteries. The test lights are modulated at 270 and 330 Hz, respectively. The receiver has a bender and detects the power of the induced leaked test light. We designed the receiver to be light and compact for use in aerial optical closures. It runs on batteries because it is designed for outdoor use. Field engineers can use this tool to identify unused fibers during cable installation or removal work.
Fig. 8. Prototype optical filter checking tool.
We described a water sensor module that can detect water penetration in underground closures and enables the maintenance system to detect two or more penetrated closures along one fiber and a technique for checking for optical filters in optical fiber branches in PONs with optical splitters. These methods will help to achieve smooth and correct construction and maintenance work for optical fiber cables in access networks.
http://www.johotsusintokei.soumu.go.jp/field/data/gt010103.xls (in Japanese).
Y. Enomoto, T. Watanabe, and Y. Kozawa, "Application Area Expansion Technology for Optical Fiber Line Testing System," NTT Technical Review, Vol. 6, No. 12, 2008.
https://www.ntt-review.jp/archive/ntttechnical.php?contents=ntr200812le1.html
ITU-T Recommendation G. 983 series.
IEEE 802.3ah.
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W. A. Gambling, H. Matsumura, and C. M. Ragdale, "Curvature and microbending losses in single-mode optical fibres," Opt. Quant. Elec., Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 43–59, 1979.
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N. Araki, N. Honda, H. Izumita, and M. Nakamura, "Add-on filtering technology for L/U-band extended optical fiber line testing system using wideband and high cutoff chirped FBG," Proc. of Optical Fiber Communication Conference, paper ThW4, Los Angeles, California, USA, 2004.
M. Shimizu, S. Takashima, and H. Kobayashi, "Identification system for optical fiber transmission operation lin150es with local-light injection and detection coupling system," IEEE J. Lightwave Technol., Vol. 10, No. 5, pp. 686–692, 1992.
ITU-T Recommendation L.66, "Optical fibre cable maintenance criteria for in service fibre testing in access networks."
Kenichi Nakazawa
Research Engineer, NTT Access Network Service Systems Laboratories.
He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electrical engineering from Tokushima University in 1991 and 1993, respectively. He joined NTT in 1993. Since then, he has been engaged in the development of optical access network systems.
Toshikazu Yamane
He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in mechanical engineering from Toyama University in 1994 and 1997, respectively. He joined NTT in 1997. Since then, he has been engaged in the development of optical access network systems.
Yoshitaka Enomoto
Senior Research Engineer, NTT Access Network Service Systems Laboratories.
He received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering from Meiji University, Tokyo, in 1992. He joined NTT Telecommunication Field Systems R&D Center (now NTT Access Network Service Systems Laboratories) in 1992. Since then, he has been engaged in R&D of an optical fiber line testing system and an optical fiber distribution system for central offices. He is currently engaged in work on a compact optical splitter for outside plant. He received the Young Engineer Award in 2001 from the Institute of Electronics, Information, and Communication Engineers (IEICE) of Japan. He is a member of IEICE.
Noriyuki Araki
He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electrical and electronic engineering from Sophia University, Tokyo, in 1993 and 1995, respectively. He joined NTT Access Network Service Systems Laboratories in 1995. He is engaged in R&D of operation and maintenance systems for optical fiber cable networks. He is a member of IEICE.
COPYRIGHT NTT Technical Review ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.


Charles River Apparel president Barry Lipsett stands with the supplier's tricked out Mini Cooper.
These days, automation is the name of the game in sales and marketing. Overall, that's been a good thing for businesses, reducing lift, increasing efficiency and leading to better results. But it's also made everything so dang impersonal. Sometimes, to really connect in the digital age, you've got to ditch the screens, hop in a tricked out Mini Cooper and go on an East Coast tour to visit customers.
OK, maybe that's a bit unconventional. But that's what drew Charles River Apparel to the idea. The team at the Sharon, Massachusetts-based supplier was looking for a way to get out there and meet supporters—you know, spend some quality time with customers, bring the brand direct to the people. The perfect vehicle for that, it turned out, was an actual vehicle.
So the team bought a pre-owned, royal blue Mini Cooper Clubman and wrapped it in Charles River branding. After six months of planning, they loaded the trunk with jackets, banners, a tent, a display rack—everything needed for a pop-up store—and set off down I-95 on a multi-city road trip. Captained by Barry Lipsett, the company's president, the car would carry sales reps and samples to visit customers from Boston to Georgia.
The trip took the Charles River crew to coffee shops, storefronts and three different trade shows. There were visits with six sales reps, multiple distributors and an old college roommate. There were highways and country roads, wrong turns and bad weather. At one point, there was a stop for new brake pads and rotors. It was, as any good road trip, an adventure. And, for Charles River, it was worth every mile.
When we asked Lipsett for some memorable moments from the trip, his stories were all about people. There was Mike Petrocelli in Worcester, Mass., a long-time customer who shared stories about his dad, former Boston Red Sox shortstop and third baseman Rico Petrocelli. There was Debbie Burdett, the Midas service advisor who patched up the car. There were Byron and Natalie in Atlanta, Charles River customers since 1991. There was the random highway encounter with a honking driver who turned out to be a customer.
All of it taught the Charles River team some valuable lessons about the power of relationships. And while the supplier is gearing up for a potential sequel—a West Coast tour, while not yet official, is in the idea stage—Lipsett made sure to note that you don't need a Mini Cooper or a multi-city road trip to connect with customers in the promo industry.
Of course, a cool car always helps.


text:
Fun Places for 10- and 11-year-old Children to go on Their Birthdays
By Eric Jonas
Let the party group have a friendly basketball competition.
The preteen years provide challenges when it comes to picking the right spot to hold a birthday party. If the party is too childish, you will never hear the end of it. If the party is for an older audience, the thrill will be lost. Luckily, there are many options for birthday parties that cover a wide range of interests or can be catered to the particular interests of the guest of honor.
Go to the Movies
Select movie theaters across the country provide VIP treatment for parties of any type. Being the first to see the latest and most-anticipated movie release creates a fun and memorable experience. The packages can vary depending on location and requirements, but most include reservations for the best seats in the house for the party guests. Separate rooms are available to allow the group to hang out, open gifts or enjoy a private area for lunch or dinner. Meal options are typically available and treats are practically unlimited, depending on the party package. Dedicated staff members remain present to assist with party requirements and escort the party to the reserved seats before the movie begins.
Arcades Provide a Winning Experience
Playing cool video games is a major part of daily life for many preteens, so consider having the party at an arcade for hours of fun. Some arcades provide private party rooms for decorating, gift giving and treat indulging. Some will go as far as to provide the birthday child with free tokens to encourage the use of their facility for a party. If no arcades in the area provide for private accommodations, consider starting the party at home using an existing gaming console.
Competitive Natured Preteens
For the competitive preteens that love sports, consider renting a gymnasium to get all the energy out of their systems. Go all out: have team uniforms custom-made with the names and numbers of the guests and host a basketball game. Adults attending can dress in referee uniforms and help with the game. Award customized trophies to the winning team and decorate each team's table sections with water bottles with their team colors on them. The cake can be decorated like a basketball, and party favors include miniature basketballs or stress balls. Let guests keep their uniforms to remember the day.
Go to the Backyard or Park
Party planners can host the party at home in the backyard or at a nearby park that allows the group to rent an area for the event. For party activities, rent a variety of recreational equipment, such as Velcro walls, safe rock-climbing walls, inflatable obstacle courses, bounce houses and inflatable slides, and let the party group spend the day trying out the different equipment. For lunch, bring along easy picnic foods, such as sandwiches and cut fruit and vegetables. Serve cupcakes for dessert and instead of traditional party favors, make a goody box full of homemade treats, such as brownies, chocolate bars and cookies on sticks.
Malco Theatres: Birthday Parties
3D Arcade: Birthday Party
Coolest Birthday Cakes: Coolest Homemade Basketball Cake Ideas
Inflatable Adventures: Interactive Games
Meesports: Homepage
Teenage Boys Birthday Party Ideas
Things to Do for a 15-Year-Old's Birthday
Memorable Things to Do on Your 16th Birthday
How to Plan a Kid's Birthday at the Park
Ideas for a 15 Year Old's Birthday Party
Fun Birthday Places for 13-Year-Olds


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