You just got new electronic, communications or computing devices as gifts. Don’t throw the old out. There are many ways to give them a second life instead of sending them to leach heavy metals and toxins into a landfill.
On March 31, 2017, most of the MCSE and MCSD credentials retire, leaving only new items active and available.
Have some budget left in December? Amazon has a way you can spend it. The retailer announced its first annual Digital Day for Dec. 30, 2016, in an effort to boost post-holiday sales with discounts on thousands of products. The discounts will largely be fo
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We learned plenty about our readers when examining the most-viewed posts of the year.
They sought solutions—how can organizations improve software delivery to customers?
They sought security—how is the federal government planning to protect the data of private citizens?
They wanted a peek at the hottest gadgets—who doesn’t?
Here are our top 5 blog posts of 2016:
5. How the First Email Message was Born
“That first email was sent from one Digital Equipment Corporation computer to another DEC-10, which happened to sit beside each other in (Ray Tomlinson’s) lab.”
We send and receive so many emails a day that we tend to take it for granted. Well, so did its creator, Ray Tomlinson.
Tomlinson sent the first email in 1971 and thought so little of it that he didn’t even save the test message as a keepsake. It was so insignificant to Tomlinson that he only vaguely remembers the original message—it was something resembling “QWERTYUIOP.”
In fact, he didn’t realize the significance of his invention until he later showed it to a colleague.
Tomlinson passed away in March at the age of 74.
4. Federal Agencies Prepare for Massive Cybersecurity and Privacy Revamp
“The president’s unprecedented plan is a 35 percent increase in government-wide cybersecurity spending from the 2016 federal budget.”
This blog is probably more relevant now than when it posted in March. With Yahoo’s massive data breach and the recent DDoS attacks that impacted major web properties such as Netflix and Twitter, cybersecurity is a major concern for both businesses and consumers.
Recent intelligence findings concerning Russia’s influence in the presidential election have intensified fears as well. Can the federal government protect its own citizens from hackers?
In February, President Barack Obama created the Cybersecurity National Action Plan (CNAP), proposing a $19 billion budget to fund cybersecurity and update the government’s outdated IT systems. This post examines the details of the president’s plan and how Global Knowledge cybersecurity training can aid federal employees.
3. What Developers Can Expect in 2016
“As professional developers, we should know more than one programming language. … The question always remains, ‘Which language should I learn?’”
Author and developer Bradley Needham made some spot-on predictions in this early-2016 post.
He anticipated the importance of DevOps and tools that aid its success. He suggested developers learn more than one programming language and foresaw advancements in wearable tech and the software that drives them.
Needham also touches on artificial intelligence concerns that are sweeping the industry and stresses the need for software professionals to proactively work together to make sure “we get it right.”
2. Are DevOps and ITIL® in Conflict or Complementary?
“DevOps provides us with a fresh perspective to examine the ITIL framework in several key areas that will improve core processes, functions and principles within ITIL.”
Author Paul Dooley doesn’t leave any gray area here—the answer, resoundingly, is “complementary.” Dooley notes there are no conflicts between DevOps and ITIL, and the collaborative nature of DevOps adds value to service transition, service operation and the Continual Service Improvement process.
Since ITIL is the hub of best practices for the IT industry, service providers benefit greatly by incorporating harmonizing services like DevOps. If implemented correctly, this type of practice should strengthen the alignment between the business and customer.
1. Tech the Halls: Top 12 Gadgets of the Holiday Season
“Whether you prefer to stand in line for hours to buy the newest smartphone or long for the days of 8-bit gaming, there’s a perfect tech toy for you this holiday season.”
Virtual reality gaming, video doorbells, app-controlled droids … the future is here when it comes to the most coveted tech toys for the 2016 holiday season.
Global Knowledge’s tech lovers selected the gizmos they want most this year. Some are easier to come by than others. (Apologies to anyone hoping to find an NES Classic under their tree on Christmas morning. Most stores sold out the day they went on sale.)
Whether you want an iPhone 7 or a new pair of wireless headphones, the best part about filling out your tech toy wish list is feeling like a kid again.
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Several spectacular attacks in the past few months have demonstrated the power of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and the importance of cybersecurity. DDoS attacks against blogger Brian Krebs, hosting provider OVH and domain name system provider Dyn crippled a reporter’s web site, shut down cloud-based customers and blocked access to major services such as Twitter, Amazon, Netflix, Airbnb and Etsy.
What can individuals and organizations do to prevent themselves from becoming an unwitting accomplice to an attack? Furthermore, what can organizations do to protect themselves?
A denial-of-service (DoS) attack allows cybercriminals to disable an organization’s Internet presence or block access to the business’s networks. Identifying these attacks are more straightforward, or at least easier to resolve, because they seem to originate from identifiable Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. The victim can then block incoming Internet traffic from the specific IPs.
When hackers launch a DDoS assault, the problem becomes much larger for two reasons:
Many hackers deploy a remote access Trojan (RAT) to control usurped computers. If a hacker controlled one system and used it to attack and deny service to another organization, that wouldn’t be very effective. On the other hand, large-scale remote-control networks are often called Botnets, made up of malware (“bots”) or infected devices (“zombies”). Under direction of massive command-and-control networks, Cybercriminals use these hijacked systems to carry out a DDoS attack.
In the latest series of attacks, hackers used software called Mirai, an Internet-of-Things (IoT) Botnet. Instead of using infected home computers, they used smart devices found in everyday homes—webcams, DVRs, thermostats, TVs and refrigerators. Many IoT devices have built-in vulnerabilities, such as weak default passwords and extraneous network protocols. Mirai was able to exploit these weaknesses and launch massive data floods across the Internet.
There are numerous ways for consumers to protect against these kinds of attacks:
Any organization that has an Internet-facing presence could be the subject of a DDoS attack, which can be crippling, even for the largest companies. There are basic protections and mitigations any organization can invoke. These include:
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I just authored a new 5-day course on TypeScript—Essential TypeScript 2.0 with Visual Studio Code—a culmination of a four-month odyssey in which I not only had to learn TypeScript grammar and syntax, but also master an entirely new technology stack and toolchain. Here is a list of topics included in the course:
I thoroughly enjoyed the process of adding a new weapon to my arsenal as a software developer and the chance to venture off in an entirely new direction. Here are four reasons why now is the right time for you to learn TypeScript.
A compelling reason to learn JavaScript is that it can be used to write apps for more than just web browsers–you can use it to write desktop and mobile apps, as well as back-end services running in the cloud. JavaScript has unwittingly become one language to rule them all.
Web development has also matured to the point where it’s possible to write an app that has nearly the same interactivity and responsiveness as a traditional desktop application. With the advent of Single Page Applications (SPAs), turbocharged JavaScript engines quickly render rich, interactive web pages. It’s the perfect time to build SPAs because second generation frameworks have emerged that take web development to a whole new level and implement the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern (or some MV-* variation), providing benefits such as better separation of concerns, testability and maintainability. Frameworks like Angular, Aurelia and React-Redux also provide tools for quickly scaffolding new applications and preparing them for production.
TypeScript has emerged as the language of choice for building many of these kinds of modern web apps because strong typing enables features we take for granted, such as interfaces and generics. It also provides capabilities most developers couldn’t live without, such as intellisense, statement completion and code refactorings.
In 2015, JavaScript had its most significant upgrade since it was created in 1995 by Brendan Eich in a 10-day hackathon. With the release of ECMAScript 2015, JavaScript received a slew of new features, including classes, inheritance, constants, iterators, modules and promises. TypeScript not only includes all ES 2015 features, but it fast forwards to future versions of ECMAScript by supporting proposed features such as async and await operators, which help simplify asynchronous code. TypeScript lets you use advanced features of JavaScript by transpiling down to ES5, a flavor of JavaScript compatible with most browsers.
When you put modern JavaScript together with TypeScript, you get a powerful combination that gives you just about everything you might want for building SOLID applications that can run in the browser, on the server or on mobile and desktop platforms.
The nice thing about TypeScript is that you’re free to use whatever tool you like, from a full-fledged IDE like Visual Studio or Web Storm, to a lightweight code editor, such as SublimeText, Atom, Brackets or Visual Studio Code. While there’s nothing wrong with any of these options, I prefer using VS Code for TypeScript development because it comes with TypeScript in the box and the team eats their own dog food by using TypeScript to build the editor.
Coming from a C# background, where I was confined to using Visual Studio on Windows, I appreciate being able to run VS Code on my Mac. VS Code starts quickly and I can open it at a specific folder from either the Finder or Terminal. I also found navigation in VS Code to be straightforward and intuitive, and you can perform many tasks from the command palette, including custom gulp tasks. VS Code functions as a great markdown editor with a side-by-side preview that refreshes in real time as you make changes. It has Git integration and debugging support, as well as a marketplace of third-party extensions that provide a variety of nifty services, such as TypeScript linting and Angular 2 code snippets. Put it all together and VS Code is a perfect fit for TypeScript development.
One of the most compelling reasons I can think of for picking up TypeScript is that it’s the brainchild of the same person who created C#, Anders Hejlsberg, who also invented Turbo Paschal and Delphi. Having such an amazing track record, I have a high degree of confidence in following him into the world of web and native JavaScript development. Anders has made it possible to be more productive and write code that is more resilient because the TypeScript compiler is able to catch problems at development time that would otherwise only become apparent at runtime.
Lastly, it’s significant that Anders did not choose to create a language that is different than JavaScript, such as CoffeeScript, but rather one that includes all of JavaScript with optional type annotations that disappear when TypeScript is compiled down to plain old JavaScript. In fact, all JavaScript is valid TypeScript, and you can insert annotations or leave them out wherever you like, giving you the best of both dynamic and static typing. In other words, TypeScript does not dictate that you follow any of its prescriptions.
All in all, the latest version of TypeScript gives developers what they pine for—additional features that create flexibility, productivity and power. But most importantly, it creates less headaches. I look forward to you joining me in the Essential TypeScript 2.0 with Visual Studio Code course to discover TypeScript’s capabilities.
Happy coding!
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A denial-of-service (DoS) attack is a cyber assault intended to block legitimate access to organizations and servers on the Internet. There are two types of DoS attacks: a standard DoS and a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS).
A classic DoS attack is initiated by only a small number of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses—often the assault originates with a single computer or network.
A DDoS attack uses hundreds, thousands or even millions of IP addresses and systems. On Oct. 21, in the largest attack of its kind, hackers used vulnerable home devices such as DVRs and webcams to flood the services of Internet infrastructure provider Dyn. This DDoS attack overwhelmed the victim’s Domain Name System (DNS) servers and made many well-known Internet domains, such as Netflix and Twitter, unavailable for a short period of time.
The attack against Dyn used a Botnet of web-facing devices under control of hacker software called Mirai. Traditionally, hackers use Botnets made up of compromised home computers, PCs and other general purpose systems. Unsuspecting end users open malicious email attachments or respond to prompts and pop-ups from malicious web sites, thereby infecting their computers and becoming part of the Botnet. Mirai was different; it used smart devices like web-accessible baby monitors, surveillance cameras, printers and other Internet of Things (IoT) devices to flood Dyn’s servers on behalf of the attackers.
Typically a simple DoS attack depends on someone sending a malcrafted message across a network—such as the infamous WinNuke—to a target system or have someone open a poisoned file in an application. This could cause a program to close involuntarily, a Blue Screen of Death in Windows or a kernel panic on Mac OS X.
Malcrafted message DoS are effective as single attacks until the victim strengthens their network or patches their systems, at which point hackers are blocked and the attack fails.
Whether a DoS or DDoS, cybercriminals can use three or four other nefarious attack mechanisms:
Between the work done by Internet service providers, regulators and the government, efforts are underway to remove the underlying mechanisms used in DoS and DDoS attacks. Part 2 of this blog series will examine how organizations and individuals can avoid becoming victims.
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