Sean McGrath of InformationWeek recently confirmed that the rise of the public Cloud as a “de-facto standard” has prompted businesses to ask new questions about their respective security procedures. “The answer to numerous security questions and concerns lies, of course, in encryption,” he explained.
Robots and sensors eyed for civil construction
Writing for the New Civil Engineer, Greg Pitcher reports that civil contractors will increasingly use robots and sensors to create structures in futuristic offsite factories. “In 10 years’ time I see robots and robotic machinery being used in offsite construction facilities, rather than cranes and forklift trucks,” Duncan White, the director of science and industry at consultants Arup, explained in a recent report cited by the New Civil Engineer.
Abellio ScotRail aims for 60% Smart with Nevis System
July 2015
Abellio has chosen the ITSO-based smart ticketing system provided by Nevis Technologies and has big plans for smart ticketing.
Abellio chooses Nevis Technologies as its smart ticketing provider
The Dutch company has been running the ScotRail franchise since April this year and has big plans for smart ticketing. Nevis Technologies back office HOPS system was successfully implemented in time for its franchise takeover.
Nevis Technologies is the joint venture company set up between Rambus Ecebs and Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT), which is running the ITSO-based smart ticketing system for smartcards currently being used in Glasgow’s Subway.
Dan Schoenhofen, ticketing project manager at SPT, told the recent Scottish Transport Applications & Research (STAR) conference in Glasgow that 77,000 smartcards have been issued since the launch of the Subway smartcard in October 2013.
A fares differential encourages smartcard uptake – a single ticket using the card is £1.40 compared with a cash fare of £1.60. SPT is now exploring options to grow usage to 60%.
Schoenhofen said the ITSO compatible card could be used by other organisations and confirmed that Abellio has appointed Nevis Technologies to provide smartcards, a back office system (HOPS) plus customer and card management system for travel.
Abellio ScotRail smartcard holders can currently load season tickets for main commuter routes but there are plans for many more ticket offerings and seat reservations, as well as multi-modal, multi-operator integration with Transport Scotland, starting with Glasgow’s Subway.
Currently, more than 86 million passenger journeys are taken a year on ScotRail services. Some 13 million passenger journeys were taken on the Glasgow Subway in 2014/15.
Mitnick says the IoT is exploitable
Kevin Mitnick recently told the Freescale Technology Forum that the Internet of Things (IoT) is “exploitable.” “I don’t know any system out there that’s impenetrable,” the hacker turned security consultant emphasized during a conference symposium cited by DesignNews. “In our experience, when we are hired by clients to attack their systems, our success rate is 100%.”
Ford and HP hit the road with Big Data analytics
Ford and Hewlett Packard (HP) have completed a real-world driving experiment that explored ways of improving personalized services, bolstering recommendations for individual drivers and optimizing fleet management.
PC World packs 128GB of DDR4 – into a single PC
PC World executive editor Gordon Mah Ung recently announced that his team successfully “smashed right through” the traditional 64GB system RAM barrier. “[The] barrier has vexed consumer computing for years now. Mainstream desktop PCs have all featured four slots for a maximum of 32GB of DDR3 RAM,” he explained.
