Connecticut's IT Managed Services Blog

A new study from CPU maker, AMD, shows that over one third, 37%, of companies are now using cloud infrastructure for their data centers with an additional 43% of companies investigating implementation. And this isn’t just small companies who are relying on the power of cloud technology, with 63% of those using the cloud saying that they have data stored in there worth over $250,000, meaning billions of dollars worth of information is now sitting securely off-site.

Cloud computing has been growing over the past couple of years, and has increased with the wide spread of virtualization allowing companies to scale their IT department easier and more efficiently. 1 in 10 companies are now storing over 10 million dollars in the cloud now, but there is still concerns from security experts who point out that are still some flaws that have come to light recently with companies like Sony having their servers hacked and Amazon’s cloud service going down for an extended period of time leaving many companies unable to access their information. While security was still sited as the number one concern when moving to a cloud infrastructure, these flaws in the cloud computing model haven’t deterred companies from moving to the cloud, having the benefits of accessing their information from anywhere and allowing companies to outsource certain IT tasks to an outside company.

It was recently found that Apple has been tracking every iPhone user’s location with a secret hidden file. This came as a shock to most, as Apple has never mentioned this feature, which was most likely added in the iOS 4 update, and has caused quite a stir among privacy experts. This file tracks your location based on cell phone triangulation, which gives a general pinpoint of where you are at that time by locating the signal strength over 3 towers. What is even more alarming as there is currently no way to prevent apple from gathering your data, even with your GPS off, Apple can see where you were at any given time. To make matters worse, this file is unencrypted, meaning that anyone with a little bit of knowhow can pull up this data and check in on your activities.

Currently there is no word on why Apple added this feature to its mobile devices or what it planned on doing with the data, but the data is there assessable to anyone who can gain access to your iPhone or even a backup copy you make during syncing, as the data is transferred from the device to your computer. Current speculation has people wondering if this was even intentional, as both Android and Windows Mobile both track your location, but only the most recent one used. Apple might have been doing the same thing, but do to a bug/oversight it might not be deleting the past data like it should.

For the people who don’t trust anyone with their data, Toshiba has released a new hard drive that automatically erases itself if it plugged into another computer. This feature works by having the hard drive detect which computer it was originally installed on and from there it checks at each boot to make sure it’s connected to that computer. If you install it on another computer it automatically formats itself ensuring that nobody can have access to your data.

Password security is one of those things that you don't think about until its too late, here we outline a simple list of Do's and Don'ts when picking a secure password. Hint: if you password is a simple dictionary word with a couple numbers its not secure.