By Tony Bradley
May 3, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO – RIM president and CEO Thorsten Heins seemed upbeat and optimistic giving his first ever BlackBerry World keynote this morning. While some–myself included–have questioned whether or not RIM has a future at all, RIM demonstrated throughout the keynote that it believes the future is bright, and it’s called BlackBerry 10.
Heins began the BlackBerry World keynote by highlighting smartphone usage statistics. According to the data shared by RIM, the 77 million BlackBerry users around the globe are more engaged with social networking, and interact more from their BlackBerry devices than the averages for smartphones in general.

After the introductory pleasantries, Heins unveiled the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device. It’s a buttonless slab–bigger than your typical smartphone, but smaller than a PlayBook, which is on the lower end of size for the tablet market. I’d say the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device was a 5-inch device, roughly the size of the original Dell Streak, or the Samsung Galaxy Note.

As the name implies, the device is loaded with an early Alpha build of the BlackBerry 10 platform. Attendees of the BlackBerry Jam developer conference that coincides with BlackBerry World will each be given a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device to work with.

The world has been waiting for the new and improved BlackBerry platform, and the accompanying devices for some time. Heins explained, “We’re taking our time to make sure we get this right.”

Makes sense. Microsoft seemed to come quite late to the game with Windows Phone, but it is a solid, innovative platform that was worth the wait. It’s much better for RIM to take its time and get it right than to rush to market with a half-baked platform just to get something on the shelf. RIM already tried that–it’scalled the PlayBook.
RIM demonstrated some of the features and capabilities of BlackBerry 10 during the keynote. It looks fairly impressive. BlackBerry 10 uses a swiped pane interface that reminds me of the Facebook or Twitter apps on the iPad. RIM also showed off an innovative predictive typing capability, and a camera app that captures a segment of time rather than a specific moment–giving you the ability to move back and forth over a few seconds of time to find the best photo.

Heins summed it up with, “It’s all about making BlackBerry people more agile.”

Does BlackBerry 10 look like the Holy Grail that will return BlackBerry to its former glory, and rightful place of dominance atop the smartphone market? In a word, no. That ship has sailed.

But, perhaps the better question is “Does BlackBerry 10 look capable and innovative enough to excite users and keep BlackBerry in the game?” Yes, I think so.

Assuming BlackBerry 10 is delivered on time, and that the real-world hardware and software deliver an experience close to what RIM demonstrated on stage, it seems to me that RIM will regain some of its lost relevance and keep its place among the top three or four mobile platforms rather than fading into oblivion.

By Brad Reed
May 3, 2012

FRAMINGHAM - Android may be lagging behind in the enterprise market, but in the consumer market it’s still going full speed ahead.

The latest numbers from research firm comScore show that Android devices accounted for 51% of allsmartphones used in the United States in the first quarter of 2012, the first time comScore has found that Android has accounted for more than half of all smartphones used in the U.S. over a given quarter. Apple‘s iOS accounted for 30.7% of all smartphones used in Q1 2012, while Research in Motion’s BlackBerry OS accounted for 12.3%. Quarter-over-quarter, RIM saw its share of the smartphone market decline by 3.7 percentage points, while Android saw its share increase by 3.7 percentage points. Or put another way, Android’s rise in market share in the quarter was the exact same number as RIM’s decline over the quarter.

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ComScore also found that Samsung, which produces the Galaxy line of Android smartphones, was the top overall manufacturer in the U.S., accounting for 26% of all smartphones used in the quarter. LG (19.3% of all smartphones used in the quarter), Apple (14%), Motorola (128%) and HTC (6%) all rounded out the top five manufacturers on the quarter, comScore found.

While Android has been a tremendously successful mobile operating system for consumer smartphones, it has lagged behind Apple in both the enterprise smartphone market and the overall tablet market. According to the latest numbers released by mobile enterprise tech firm Good Technology, iOS devices accounted for around 80% of new activations on corporate networks in the first quarter of 2012, while Android-based devices accounted for just 20%. No other mobile platform, such as Windows Mobile, registered enough activations on the quarter to crack Good’s study, which tracked mobile device activations across thousands of companies that registered at least five activated mobile devices.

In the tablet environment, meanwhile, Apple’s iPad still holds a stranglehold on the top spot as research firm iSuppli estimated earlier this year that iPads accounted for 57.6% of all tablets sold in the fourth quarter of 2011. The Amazon Kindle Fire, which accounts for more than half of all Android tablets sold, has been the only Android tablet to really register as a commercial hit. And even then, the device’s estimated 4 million Q4 2011 sales were thoroughly dwarfed by the iPad, which sold an estimated 15 million units in Q4 2011.

Google has only been seriously making a push into the tablet market since late last year, when it released Android 4.0 (“Ice Cream Sandwich”), the first version of the operating system designed to deliver the same user experience on both smartphones and tablets. In addition, the operating system came with several new features including a lock screen that can unlock using facial recognition software; Android Beam, technology that lets users send contact information, directions, Web pages and more via near field communications by tapping their phones together; and integration with the Google+ social network that lets users host online video chats among their circles of friends.

May 3, 2012

May 2, 2012

Blue Coat Systems, Inc., a technology leader in Web security and WAN optimization solutions, introduced its Unified Security solution that enables the extended enterprise to expand its secure perimeter to now include all users on devices across any network. The Blue Coat Unified Security solution is the industry’s only Web security solution that leverages the same patented technologies and infrastructure across appliances and a cloud-based security service to seamlessly deliver consistent policies and protection to all users.

The Blue Coat Unified Security solution delivers Global Threat Defense, Universal Policy and Unified Reporting across its Secure Web Gateway appliances and the cloud-based Blue Coat Security Service, giving businesses the flexibility to deploy a solution that best meets their unique requirements. This deployment flexibility enables enterprises to protect their investment in existing deployments while extending security to smaller branch offices and remote or mobile users.

The boundaries of the extended enterprise are increasingly fluid, driven by the growth of mobile devices and increasing “consumerization” of applications on the corporate network. Users accessing the network with multiple devices, and expecting access from any location or device, create a security gap for enterprises. According to the Blue Coat 2012 Web Security Report, Social Networking was the second most requested category of content for users of Apple iOS devices. In the same report, Blue Coat Security Labs also found that Social Networking was the third most popular attack vector in 2011, representing 1 in 16 malnet (malware network) attacks.

In today’s environment, securing the network means securing the user. Traditional security solutions are not equipped to continuously protect, control and manage users as they move from headquarters to branch offices to remote locations and from desktops to laptops to mobile devices.
“The growing adoption of mobile devices gives employees maximum access to the corporate network with little of the protection they get within the four walls of the enterprise. This fundamental transition requires enterprises to shift from securing the network to securing the user by extending corporate security and compliance policies to all devices accessing the network,” said Steve Daheb, chief marketing officer and senior vice president of corporate and business development, Blue Coat Systems. “The Blue Coat Unified Security solution will seamlessly extend industry-leading threat protection and policy control to users in any location, on any network, across any device to eliminate the security gaps that leave enterprises exposed to malware threats and data loss.”

The Blue Coat Unified Security solution delivers Global Threat Defense, Universal Policy and Unified Reporting capabilities to the extended enterprise.
The Global Threat Defense provides consistent enterprise-grade protection powered by the Blue Coat WebPulse collaborative defense. Utilizing real-time requests and ratings, WebPulse has comprehensive visibility into web and malnet ecosystems. Currently, Blue Coat is tracking more than 500 malnets, enabling WebPulse to identify new malicious components and provide a negative day defense that can block attacks at their source before they launch. In 2012, Blue Coat Security Labs expects that nearly two-thirds of all new attacks will be launched by malnets, making Global Threat Defense for all users a critical requirement to eliminate potential security gaps.

Universal Policy gives extended enterprises the ability to create global policies that seamlessly follow a user across all networks on all devices. The single policy per user capability is built on the industry’s most flexible policy engine that delivers in-depth action-based polices as well as granular web application and operation controls. With Universal Policy, the extended enterprise can set security, acceptable use, compliance and productivity policies depending on user situations and devices.

Unified Reporting from Blue Coat delivers a single “pane-of-glass” view into all web and user behavior. With this aggregate global view across all products and locations, the extended enterprise has a powerful tool for drilling into behavior to identify security risks and take closed loop policy actions. For example, Unified Reporting can identify advanced persistent threat activity on the network and infected end user systems for rapid incident resolution and forensics. Available today, Unified Reporting can be delivered as an on-premise solution, where reports are aggregated on site, or as a hosted solution that aggregates reports in the Blue Coat Security Service.

Global Threat Defense and Unified Reporting for the Unified Security solution are also available today.

For additional information, visit www.bluecoat.com.

Security Essentials’ user interface is particularly straightforward–perfect if you don’t want to waste time messing around with your antivirus software.

Microsoft’s program cleans up malware infections quite effectively: In our tests, it identified all active infections on our machine and disabled over 93 percent of the malware. It removed all traces of malware 80 percent of the time–better than any of its competitors in this roundup. In addition, it was one of the two free antivirus applications that didn’t mistake a single safe file for malware.

While Security Essentials excels at removing malware from a PC, it doesn’t do as well at keeping dangerous code off a computer in the first place. It fully blocked 71.4 percent of new malware in our real-world tests, slightly worse than average. In our zoo test, it detected 97.0 percent of known malware samples. With that result, it lags the competition–some packages detected over 99.9 percent of samples.

Security Essentials didn’t unduly slow overall system performance, but it performed a good deal worse than average in file-copy tests and app-installation tests. In scan speeds it also fell behind the pack: Its on-demand scanner completed our virtual obstacle course in a worse-than-average 3 minutes, 56 seconds. The on-access scanner was poky too, clocking in at 6 minutes, 43 seconds.

Although Microsoft Security Essentials has some good qualities, you would be better served by looking at some other options.

Instructions posted on Pastebin on Thursday showed how a person’s IP address could be shown without adding the targeted user as a contact by looking at the person’s general information and log files.

Skype, which is owned by Microsoft, said in an e-mail statement that “this is an ongoing, industry-wide issue faced by all peer-to-peer software companies. We are committed to the safety and security of our customers and we are taking measures to help protect them.”

In October, Skype acknowledged a research paper that showed how a Skype user’s IP address can be determined without that user knowing. It also demonstrated that more than half the time the IP address could be accurately linked to sharing content using the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol.

An IP address is an important piece of information that can be used to track the approximate location of a user and their service provider. But the information is not necessarily accurate, as a person could be using a VPN, whose data center may be located in a different country than the actual user.

Another way to broadcast inaccurate IP addresses is browsing the internet using The Onion Router (TOR), an anonymizing service that routes a person’s internet traffic through a network of worldwide servers in a fashion that is difficult to trace. An IP address also just identifies a computer and not the person sitting behind a keyboard.

Skype uses a peer-to-peer system to route its data traffic, which is also encrypted. But its encryption system is proprietary and not been open for scrutiny, which has prompted caution from security experts.

Wake Up is a catch line in a Samsung campaign to promote its Galaxy S III Android phone, which is expected to be launched in London next week. In recent video teases for the new phone, Samsung has also implicitly compared iPhone users to conforming sheep.

Samsung’s court battles with Apple over who is stepping on whose patents have been well publicized. Recently, though, it appeared the companies might be ready to sit down and settle their differences, albeit at the order of a federal court judge.

Even Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, not known for his volatility, expressed irritation at the behavior of Samsung and others at an earnings event held by the company this week. “I’ve always hated litigation, and I continue to hate it,” he told analysts at the event. “We just want people to invent their own stuff.”