Did you know it is technically possible to spy on wearable devices in a gym or coffee shop? Fortunately, as Wareable’s David Nield points out, it’s highly unlikely that anyone who isn’t a security researcher is actually going to bother to try – for now. “The few drops of data available are not worth the challenge of trying to grab them – it’s too much effort for too little reward,” Nield explains.
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WiFi powers these sensors
A team of researchers from the University of Washington (UW) has successfully demonstrated that a WiFi router is capable of providing far field wireless power – without compromising the network’s communication performance.
Can Big Data heal healthcare?
As Greta Kaul of the San Francisco Chronicle recently noted, the high cost of healthcare remains a salient “pain point” for many American families. Unsurprisingly, many in the industry are turning to Big Data analytics to help alleviate some of the discomfort. “[It could] lop off, by some estimates, 8 percent of the trillions in national health care expenditures spent in the United States each year,” writes Kaul.
The evolution of SSDs in the Enterprise
When Solid State Storage Devices (SSDs) first appeared on the market in the early 1990s, industry pundits were unsure as to when the flash-based devices would be capable of competing with traditional hard disk drives (HDDs). Known for their reliability, low-cost and consistent performance, HDDs have always managed to push back on SSD encroachment. However, the SSD-HDD paradigm has changed in recent years, especially for Enterprise-class storage. This is primarily due to increased SSD performance and efficiency (higher IOPS, lower latency, etc.), both of which are made possible by high-speed interfaces such as SATA 3.0 SAS 2 and PCIe-based NVMe.
Hospital medical devices targeted in cyber attack
A recent report authored by TrapX details three instances where hospitals were hit by data breaches. According to DarkReading’s Kelly Jackson Higgins, the digital intrusions occurred after certain medical devices had been infected with malware backdoors. “In all three cases, the hospitals were unaware that these devices – a blood gas analyzer, a picture archive and communications system (PACS) and an x-ray system – were infiltrated with malware,” writes Higgins.
The Evolution of Biometric Security: Part Two
Writing for SemiconductorEngineering, Ernest Worthman notes that while biometrics offer a plethora of potential security-based tools, there are currently only two in wide-scale deployment: fingerprints and facial scanning. Indeed, according to ABI digital security analyst Dimitrios Pavlakis, fingerprints account for 60% to 70% of all biometric applications. Additional technologies eyed by major industry players include iris, retina, face, palm and hand scans.
