It’s called SOC-in-a-Box, a product Earthwave began offering after helping companies on a piecemeal basis build security operations centers, said Carlo Minassian, who founded the Sydney-based company 12 years ago and is its CEO.

Financial services, telecommunication operators and government agencies all need extensive monitoring of their networks as hackers seek to steal data and disrupt operations.

That monitoring requires installing a security information and event management (SIEM) product, which tries to pick out anomalies in network traffic. It also requires physically building a SOC, meeting a variety of industry and government standards as well as hiring the right people to run it.

Perhaps not surprisingly, many projects failed or ran way over budget, Minassian said. “We saw this consistently happening especially in the last four or five years. As the SIEM market is heating up, more and more people are buying it, and we are seeing more and more failed projects.”

Earthwave decided to start offering a SOC as a complete package. Companies typically can spend three to five years building, certifying and staffing a SOC on their own built from scratch, but Earthwave has cut that time down to a year, Minassian said. Clients can use whatever technology they want, with Earthwave making sure it works right, or even contract with Earthwave to run it.

Earthwave builds to specifications such as Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), ISO/IEC 27001, the payment card industry’s PCI/DSS, the Australia Security Intelligence Organisation’s T4 physical security standard and Australia’s Defence Signals Directorate’s “Highly Protected” classification, among others. Since Earthwave has already obtained the various certifications, its customers know their SOCs will pass as well, Minassian said.

Two SOCs run by Earthwave for its customers have bulletproof glass, wire meshing in concrete slabs and special cabinets for servers to prevent unauthorized access. Separate air conditioning ducts separate from the main building serve the SOC to prevent intruders from gaining access. Armed guards will respond to an incident in the centers in under 15 minutes.

On the software side, Earthwave uses ArcSight, now owned by HP, for security event monitoring. Earthwave’s developers have built a customized portal that collates information from the various security products employed by its clients.

It also has developed its own intellectual property built around ArcSight in the form of 400 information “feeds” which detect certain defined security risks. One scenario a feed would detect is if a person is physically at work but is logging onto a sensitive company system from somewhere else, Minassian said.

Minassian also spearheaded the Threat Intelligence Alliance, a program started five years ago that collects information on Internet threats from other vendors, such as URL blacklists and botnet command-and-control servers. That intelligence is incorporated into its network monitoring systems.

About half of Earthwave’s clients are Australian government agencies, with the others in areas such as financial services and telecommunications. For example, Earthwave is responsible for network monitoring for about 95 percent of the critical infrastructure used for delivering clean water and energy in the state of New South Wales, Minassian said.

So far Earthwave’s managed services are focused solely on Australia due to data-handling requirements dictated by the security specifications it builds to, Minassian said. But the company has done consulting for other large companies outside of Australia.

Earthwave’s business has come into its own as of late, but its early days were hard: Minassian, an ethnic Armenian who immigrated to Australia from Iran in 1985, said he worked for free for years as it struggled to stay in business. Now, it has changed: He said last year he rebuffed more than a dozen acquisition offers from defense companies, venture capital firms and other vendors.

He won’t sell — yet. “I’m having too much fun,” Minassian said.

Send news tips and comments to jeremy_kirk@idg.com

PCWorld Latest Technology News

Taobao Marketplace and Taobao Mall, two of China’s leading online shopping sites with more than 400 million users, report a growing amount of merchandise being bought through the company’s apps and mobile Internet sites. In 2011, the gross merchandise value from the companies’ mobile purchases reached 11.8 billion yuan (US$ 1.86 billion), up more than six times from 1.8 billion yuan generated in the previous year.

The Taobao companies project the gross merchandise value from mobile purchases will be even higher in 2012, reaching 50 billion yuan, because of growing smartphone and tablet adoption in China.

In the past, Taobao’s mobile users were mainly purchasing intangible and virtual products, said Alibaba Group spokeswoman Florence Shih. But now the companies have seen a “huge surge” in the number of mobile users buying physical products on the sites, with the change attributed to better usability of the company’s apps and mobile sites, she said.

Alibaba’s e-commerce businesses have been working to tap the mobile shopping market, going as far as to create a mobile operating system called Aliyun. On Monday, Taobao Mall started pre-orders for the newest smartphone to feature the mobile OS, which offers apps to connect to its Internet services.

“The mobile shopping market is growing very fast,” said Su Huiyan, an analyst with technology consultancy firm iResearch, who noted that companies including Alibaba Group have been pushing for its development.

Total transaction volume in China’s mobile shopping market reached 11.4 billion yuan in 2011, a five fold increase from 2.2 billion in the previous year, according to iResearch. By 2015, the market is projected to reach 304.9 billion yuan.

“There’s not as much smartphone penetration in China, and the mobile shopping habits are not there yet,” Su said. But that will change in the next three to five years, as smartphones become more widespread among the Chinese population, she added.

China now has 1 billion mobile phone subscriptions in the country, according to official government estimates. But only about 14 percent of those subscriptions are with mobile phones operating on China’s faster 3G networks.

On March 21, Alibaba’s Taobao sites reached more than 100 million unique visitors cumulatively coming via the company’s apps and mobile Internet sites. By the end of the year, the companies expect the figure to reach 200 million unique visitors.

PCWorld Latest Technology News

The audio component works as advertised: the sound is crisp, and in the right games the sense of immersion and space is simply awesome. But if you’ve used surround sound headsets before, you’re likely familiar with that feeling. And this is where the tricky subjectivity of it all comes in — sound cards deliver arguably improved audio fidelity and quality, but software-driven, wireless headsets that simply emulate that surround sound effect sound great too.

There’s more to a headset than arguments about audio fidelity. The Tiamat is incredibly comfortable, sporting large, faux-leather cups that remain snug during lengthy sessions, without becoming especially warm or sweaty. An elastic band stretches to fit around my head comfortably, so I never feel constricted while wearing it.

The build is solid — sturdy, but offering just enough flex to assuage any fears about damage while in use. I’ve snapped expensive wireless headsets in the past by simply sliding them from my head down to my neck and back again repeatedly, but the Tiamat wraps around my oversized skull with ease.

The microphone retracts into the left ear cup, sliding in and out with ease. I’ve owned quite a few headsets, most of which offered detachable microphones. This seems like a good idea until a voice conversation requests pop up suddenly (I spend a lot of time playing MMOs), and you have no idea where you stashed the mic. Voice input quality is good if you’re using a sound card (more on that in a bit); when I plugged the Tiamat into my motherboard’s audio outputs, my teammates remarked that I sounded a bit scratchy, and distant — specially, like a robot in a well.

The volume control unit is a wonder in and of itself. It’s about as large as an oversized deck of cards, and consists of a volume knob, a volume toggle switch, and three buttons — one for muting the microphone, a second for toggling between speakers and the headset, and one for swapping between 7.1 and 2.0 output modes. The volume knob serves as a large button; press it to mute the audio on the fly.

The toggle switch is arguably my favorite feature. You can use it to quickly swap between the headset’s individual speakers, and adjust each volume level independently — the lighted dial around the volume knob indicates each level individually. There’s a lot of freedom here; I found a sweet spot for every single setting, but I would’ve loved if there were some ability to save profiles — one setting for multiplayer matches that keeps the rear speakers dialed up a bit, and a balanced setting for role-playing games, as an example.

Another great, oft-neglected feature of headsets is that speaker and headset toggle switch. There’s a micro-usb port on one end of the volume control unit, where you can plug in the included speaker input dongle. Plug your speakers in to that, and you can automatically swap between headsets and speakers on the fly. I kept the headset on for games like Battlefield 3. In League of Legends, where pinpoint audio accuracy isn’t necessarily a must (at my skill level, anyway), I swapped over to my speakers. The intricate volume controls don’t work with standard speakers, but it’s still a definite improvement over needing to set audio output sources manually in games, or in Windows.

A braided cable tethers the Tiamat to your PC. It’s rather long, but I hate cables. Wires will negate any connectivity or fidelity issues you may run into with wireless headsets, but… I hate cables. It’s a personal choice, really.

The audio jacks on the Tiamat’s cable connect to your sound card (or motherboard), but there’s also a USB plug that powers the volume control unit. I ran into some trouble here; a loud, annoying buzz filled the ear cups wherever I plugged the Tiamat in. Razer’s FAQ explains this problem away — every single one of my motherboard’s USB ports apparently have a grounding issue. User experience will vary, but I needed an external USB adapter to get rid of the buzz.

Of some importance: the Tiamat looks really, really good. You won’t ever see the subtle green glow or the bold, exposed drivers, since the thing is on your head. But rest assured that you look great.

But at what cost? The Razer Tiamat 7.1 will set you back $ 179, which isn’t bad. But to get best surround sound experience, you’re simply going to have to shell out extra cash for a 7.1-surround capable sound card. A 5.1 surround sound card will work (as will standard stereo inputs), but you’ll be missing out on the extra drivers baked into the headset.

As PCWorld’s Desktops editor, I’m fortunate enough to have a large array of PCs and components at my disposal. At home, I dusted off a relatively ancient (2010) Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium sound card and slapped it into my personal PC. But many folks simply don’t have a dedicated sound card. Just a few years ago, this sound card requirement wouldn’t have been a big deal. But motherboards have come a long way, and for many of us, built-in analog audio outputs have been good enough.

That’s a bold claim to make, but hear me out. I’m no audiophile; I appreciate the immersion and detail that a proper surround sound setup affords, but there are plenty of headsets on the market that deliver an excellent experience, despite being software driven. My current go-to set is Creative’s Sound Blaster Tactic3D Wrath ($ 140). Purists will lambast wireless headsets, but any perceived loss in audio fidelity melts away when I’m free to get up and make a drink without missing out on crucial audio cues or conversations.

It’s a value proposition, really. If you’re using an older motherboard, or simply aren’t impressed with your current audio setup, a sound card is going to be a great investment. Once you have that sound card (or if you already own a 7.1-surround capable card), the Razer Tiamat 7.1 will serve you well. If you just want great audio and don’t care that it’s virtual and not “true” 7.1 surround sound, options abound.

PCWorld Latest Technology News

By Kim Saccio-Kent, PCWorld Exclusive    Apr 9, 2012 7:30 PM

PCWorld Latest Technology News

It would have been the beginning of an arduous process that included drafting inadequate original business requirements and technical design documents, circulating them to employees inside the operations groups around the world for comment and review, making revisions, and re-circulating improved documents.

Instead, the IT workers struck upon an idea: With only three clicks (or taps) to launch and set up the newly arrived Cisco Jabber app on their iPads, they created a videoconference and invited a key employee in India to answer some of their questions. In doing so, they no longer needed back-and-forth emails and revisions.

“We went from 10 business days of communication down to an hour,” says Mike Fitzgerald, managing director and head of information systems at Eagle Investment Systems, a global technology solutions provider serving the financial services industry. (Fitzgerald was also in the conference room.)

Videoconferencing, instant messaging and collaboration on the iPad is gaining steam as more iPads make their way into the enterprise. Companies have become more comfortable with these emerging methods of communication. They’re pouring investments into Wi-Fi upgrades and videoconferencing networking technology from tech giants such as Cisco, IBM and Microsoft.

The new iPad released earlier this year could provide an even greater lift. Its fast 4G LTE connection capability and Retina graphics display, which doubles the iPad 2′s resolution, seem to be built for videoconferencing. “High-definition video on the iPad 3 is vivid,” Fitzgerald says.

Eagle Investment Systems has some 200 employees using corporate-owned iPads with Jabber, a Cisco app for instant messaging, voice, video and conferencing that Cisco extended to iPad and Windows in March. In the next 12 to 18 months, this number should grow to 600 employees. Roughly half of these employees will be outside the United States, in countries such as England, China, Poland and the Arab states.

[Slideshow: 15 Ways iPad Goes to Work]

It’s not just videoconferencing, either. Mobile devices are changing the way employees talk to each other. Late last year, Eagle Investment Systems studied how its employees were communicating internally and found a massive shift underway: more instant messaging sessions than email sessions.

Of course, iPads, iPhones and other smartphones and tablets are great instant-messaging devices. “We think the Jabber component will very quickly become the predominant dashboard for how our users will communicate and collaborate internally,” Fitzgerald says.

Mike Fitzgerald, managing director and head of IS at Eagle Investment Systems

Fitzgerald, though, is quick to point out that companies tend to put too much emphasis on the device-that is, the iPad and smartphone-and not enough on the underlying network. This can spell disaster for a CIO attempting to bring mobile videoconferencing to a company.

For example, just look to Skype. People love it for personal use because it’s free and are willing to put up with inconsistency and, at times, lackluster video sessions and voice-over-IP. But today’s tech-savvy mobile worker won’t put up with shoddy communication services at work.

[Slideshow: 15 Best iPhone Apps for Busy CEOs]

“When you start to develop your business service around this channel, you have to have some predictability,” explains Fitzgerald. He decided on Cisco’s Jabber because the app is deeply integrated into Cisco’s cloud-based TelePresence network infrastructure, and thus he felt confident about Jabber’s quality of service in a global environment.

The network drives the decision, he says, never the device.

“We have no idea what the device in front of us is going to look like 10 years from now,” Fitzgerald says. “But building and deploying a network is a 10-year-decision … so we do know what the network is going to look like.”

Tom Kaneshige covers Apple and Consumerization of IT for CIO.com. Follow Tom on Twitter @kaneshige. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline and on Facebook. Email Tom at tkaneshige@cio.com

Read more about consumer it in CIO’s Consumer IT Drilldown.

PCWorld Latest Technology News

As one of the largest users of MySQL, Twitter uses the database software to store most of the data its 140 million users generate.

“Due to our scale, we push MySQL a lot further than most companies,” wrote Twitter engineers Jeremy Cole and Davi Arnau, in a blog post announcing the release of a number of changes to the software Twitter originally made for its own use.

This code addresses a crucial issue for MySQL: the ability to scale to meet the demands of large data-processing-intensive systems, such as Twitter’s. Much of the appeal behind NoSQL-styled databases, such as Cassandra, has come from how they bypass the limits that relational databases systems such as MySQL have had in scaling across multiple servers.

Among the changes is some code that would allow MySQL to run more effectively on large pooled-memory systems. Specifically, it allocates during startup all the memory needed for the core InnoDB database engine. It also ensures adequate performance even when available server memory is at a minimum.

Twitter’s efforts to massively scale MySQL join a number of other products that target that specific need, such as Percona’s recently released XtraDB cluster, Oracle’s MySQL Cluster and TokuTek’s TokuDB.

In addition to the scalability enhancements, Twitter also added a number of other features as well to the free code. They include new internal status checks, which would allow users to monitor InnoDB performance more closely. The code also optimizes MySQL for use of SSDs (Solid-State Disks).

Twitter released the code on the eve of the Percona Live MySQL conference, being held this week in Santa Clara, California. There, Cole and Arnau will be giving a presentation on Gizzard, Twitter’s sharding and replication framework for MySQL.

Twitter posted the patches on GitHub, under a BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) license.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab’s e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

PCWorld Latest Technology News

By Jared Newman, PCWorld    Apr 9, 2012 10:48 AM

PCWorld Latest Technology News

AOL announced that it has closed a deal to sell more than 800 patents to Microsoft. The deal is just north of a billion dollars, and it’s easy to see why AOL might want to cash in on the intellectual property. What is less clear is why Microsoft is interested in the patent portfolio, or what Microsoft gains from the deal.

AOL is a mere shadow of its former self. It was once a dominant and iconic player as an online service—before the Internet itself made online services obsolete. AOL has reinvented itself and managed to stick around this long, though, but it can use the influx of cash and the boost to its stock price.

AOL makes over a billion selling patent portfolio to Microsoft.From the Microsoft side of the equation, the benefits aren’t as obvious. In this era of patent litigation against competitors as a standard business practice, the 800 plus patents Microsoft is acquiring, and the licensing that Microsoft has to the remainder of the AOL portfolio as a function of this deal certainly have value.

However, it’s unlikely that Microsoft invested a billion just for the sake of bolstering its already massive patent portfolio. Odds are fair that there are some specific patents Microsoft is targeting, and that it has a strategic reason for wanting those patents. It’s possible that the interest in AOL’s patent portfolio has to do with Microsoft’s rivalry with Google, or perhaps Microsoft’s alliance with Facebook.

Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group, points out that AOL was in the social networking space before Yahoo, and AOL likely holds a number of core patents from the granddaddy of all online social companies—CompuServe. The patents acquired by Microsoft could be used to support Facebook in the ongoing patent war with Yahoo.

It’s also possible that some of the 800 patents could prove useful against Microsoft’s primary rival–Google. Enderle says, “Google has proven particularly inept when it comes to patents suggesting a deep vulnerability so I expect that will be Microsoft’s primary short term use.”

The use of patent litigation as a means of competing with rivals is unfortunate, but it’s the reality of the tech world today. Until or unless something is done to change the nature of tech patents, or reverse the tide of patent infringement litigation, companies like Microsoft will continue to arm themselves with the largest patent portfolio possible.

It’s the Silicon Valley equivalent of the nuclear arms race and mutually assured destruction.

You can follow Tony on his Facebook page, his Google+ profile, or contact him by email at tony_bradley@pcworld.com. He also tweets as @TheTonyBradley.

PCWorld Latest Technology News

The Wi-Fi reliability problems reported by iPad owners can probably be solved with a software update, a hardware expert said last week.

“It’s unlikely that hardware is the primary cause of the [problem],” said Aaron Vronko, CEO of Michigan-based Rapid Repair, a repair shop and do-it-yourself parts supplier for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. “This is probably a software problem, or a hardware quirk that software must negotiate.”

Vronko said iPad owners hinted as much. “If this was hardware related, it would almost certainly have to be an error in assembly or failure in the chip itself,” Vronko said in an email reply to questions. “However, chip-related failure would likely be more absolute in its effects.”

Users have not said that their iPads are never able to connect to a Wi-Fi network; instead they have said the signal is weak — and download speeds are extremely slow — or they’re unable to maintain a connection.

Complaints about the iPad’s wireless reliability surfacedwithin hours of the iPad’s March 16 sales debut.

Vronko also relied on advice given by Apple to back up his speculation. Last week, an Apple support representative told Computerworld that resetting the iPad’s network settings to their factory defaults might solve the Wi-Fi problem.

“The fact that a network settings reset can sometimes resolve the issue points strongly to a power-saving feature run amok,” said Vronko.

According to Vronko and several tear-down experts, the new iPad features the Broadcom BCM4330 chip, which handles Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. That chip, new to the iPad, also is inside the iPhone 4S, which launched last October.

“[The Broadcom BCM4330 chip] boasts a new design including several new power-saving features,” said Vronko. “Wi-Fi can be a hungry customer in mobile devices and Apple knew that the new LCD and its requisite monster truck GPU would be guzzling battery juice. They had to go aggressive on performance per milliwatt on every other component.”

For that reason, Vronko wasn’t surprised to hear users gripe. “Tune a few million test subjects tightly against the performance limit and you’re bound to have some problems in the field,” he said.

The solution could turn on adjusting the iPad’s power management software to make more battery power available to the Broadcom chip.

Apple has not publicly acknowledged a Wi-Fi issue in the new iPad, or hinted whether a fix is in the works, and if so, when it would be released.

Gregg Keizercovers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for _Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at Twitter @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg’s RSS feed Keizer RSS. His e-mail address is gkeizer@computerworld.com._

_See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com. _

Read more about Macintoshin Computerworld’s Macintosh Topic Center.

For more enterprise computing news, visit Computerworld. Story copyright © 2011 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved.

PCWorld Latest Technology News

If you want to waltz with your Roomba or remotely control your flying AR Drone, there’s an online store that sells apps that let you do those things, and more. In fact, there are more than 300 apps available at the new site RobotAppStore.com.

The e-marketplace — the brainchild of longtime robotics enthusiast, programmer and innovator Elad Inbar — is unabashedly modeled after other online app stores. With over 20 million domestic robots in use, Inbar said, there’s a natural market for robot-related apps,just as there are markets for games and other apps.

Analyzing the way the app market has evolved, he pointed out that it was difficult to make money creating games for mobile phones ten years ago, because developers had to rewrite each app for every phone. But using today’s tools, it’s possible to build apps that run on multiple devices.

Inbar said he expects the same type of progress in the robot apps world: A new class of tools not yet available will help developers build ever-more-complex and interesting apps for consumer-grade robots.

One up-and-coming area, he explained, is domestic navigation. Apps built for this purpose help robots learn how to get around your house and note where things are. For example, if you ask a robot to find your reading glasses, it will know which glasses belong to you (as opposed to other people who live in your household), where you left them, and how to retrieve them without running into the sofa or tripping over the dog.

At the moment, most of the apps available at RobotAppStore.com relate to entertainment, music and games; other categories include productivity and surveillance. Most of the apps are free, but some cost up to $ 10. Developers set the prices, and Inbar’s company takes a 30 percent cut of whatever customers pay.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, my NAO robot is reading my e-mail.

Read more about hardware in Computerworld’s Hardware Topic Center.

For more enterprise computing news, visit Computerworld. Story copyright © 2011 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved.

PCWorld Latest Technology News