A Digital Poltergeist On Your Television

I love starting blogs with, ‘Remember when…’ and this is no different.  Remember when, we used to receive our television programming over the air via an antenna?  Many still do but the days of seeing a huge pointy metal object perched on top of a house are dwindling.  (That would actually be a cool photo essay – homes that still have working antennas.)  They’ve been replaced with satellite dishes and coax.  Even then, your programming was still coming over a dedicated cable from a system other than the internet.  Not so anymore.  The explosion of Internet ready Televisions, DVD players, Game consoles and other set top boxes to enjoy the entertainment the web has to offer has made many of us giddy with choices.  The range of web content, once exclusive to your browser, is now available to any room in the house and without a traditional computer.  Many Internet ready home entertainment devices come pre-equipped to watch Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Vudu, Amazon VoD, CinemaNow, Pandora and many others.  You can also surf the web like you would through a traditional computer bringing a whole new world of entertainment to your television.  But, as many of you know, anything connected to the internet can be at risk.

If your computers and mobile phones weren’t enough, now your Television is at risk of viruses.  These will be new forms of viruses never before seen or associated with our beloved idiot box, as my mom used to call it.  These internet ready entertainment havens have processors, memory, many run on Linux and are connected to the internet, how could they not be targets?  For many of the online services, we also need to enter our personal information, credit card info and other identifying data which could be stored right on your TV.  The very same information criminals like to get their hands on.  According to Ocean Blue Software, a company that develops television application software, TV’s do not have enough power to run a full anti-virus program on them.  OBS is actually developing a cloud-based AV service which will scan content before it is delivered to the set.  While I have a firewall at the edge of my home network, my TV does not have any security software, like Anti-virus or personal firewall on it.  If you can fully navigate the web from your TV, like type in any address, then you might be more at risk since you’ll be able to download just about anything.  If you use email and click a malicious link, then guess what, you very well could be infecting your TV/DVD/Set-top with a new form of malware.

We’ve seen this again and again over the years.  The rush of newness, intrigue, our desire to have things when we want them and the need to be connected has often forgot or ignored the security implications.  Deal with it later or not thinking it is a threat since no-one (yet) has compromised anything.  First computers, then our phones and most recently, we saw it with Cloud Computing – jump into the savings but forget about the security.  That was one of the topics of year for Cloud in 2010, I think.  We need to build-in security at the onset; we need to consider the risks anytime we connect any device to the internet; we need to remember that if our sensitive information is available somewhere – then someone will be looking for it.  There are many consumer appliances that are IP already like toasters, refrigerators, thermostats, DVRs, garage door openers, coffee machines, and other home gadgets.  Sounds cool doesn’t it?  Log on to my coffee maker to make sure it is set to grind and brew 15 minutes before I arrive.  Maybe that’ll be the next threat vector – my toast got burnt due to a virus. 

BREAKING NEWS from the FUTURE: We just got a report that a hacker has shut down all the refrigerators on the West Coast and now people are running out to buy ice and scrambling to find their non-internet connected coolers.  Luckily, many still have their antique, plug into the wall fridges in the garage and are able to salvage some perishables.  We’ll update you as this story evolves….

ps

Related:

• Ocean Blue Says Connected TVs Are Vulnerable To Viruses
• Digital TV's At Risk Of Virus Infection Warns OBS
• Ocean Blue Neptune Software to Fight Digital TV Virus Risks
• McAfee: Google TV could be subject to malware, viruses in 2011
• IPv6 and the End of the World
• Hackers turn their attention to mobile technology
• Connected TVs come of Age. Now what do we do with them?
• Are connected TVs, STBs at risk for computer viruses?
• Cell Phone Acting as a Portal for DNS and Internet Security Threats
• Fake CCTV Sites Deliver Malware
• New generation of TV services begin to close gap on cable

Connect with Peter:	Connect with F5:

Technorati Tags: F5, integration, cloud computing, Pete Silva, security, business, education, technology, television, threats, appliances, context-aware, set top devices, web, internet, cybercrime, security, entertainment, identity theft, scam, email, data breach

CloudFucius Confused: Cloud Costing Companies?

You heard that right.  Yeah, I know – wasn’t cloud computing supposed to save money?  All that economies of scale, pay-as-you-go, shared infrastructure, reduced CapEx and OpEx and so on has gotten real cloudy according to a recent survey.  Research company Vanson Bourne, commissioned by Compuware, found that large European companies are losing £600,000 a year due to poor performance of cloud based applications – that’s close to $1 Million USD!  These are e-commerce sites and Internet based business applications.

They surveyed 300 European IT Directors and found that 57% are slowing down, stopping or even shutting down cloud based applications until they can solve this issue.  They noted that while many organizations have large investments in cloud based systems, cloud performance management may hamper or slow the adoption rate moving forward.  84% said that they expect more accurate SLAs than simple availability especially with business critical apps.  Many respondents have experienced degraded performance to their site when a neighboring customer has a huge surge in demand.  There is finite resources available and when one customer grabs a bunch of it, everyone else can suffer. 

Organizations need to look at end to end performance from an end user perspective and not just what the cloud provider is telling them.  There are many variables when determining availability and sometimes it’s difficult to determine if it’s the cloud provider, the customer’s own infrastructure or the Internet itself.  Compuware's Richard Stone said, "Security concerns are obviously still important but it's clear that performance is now becoming the 'day in, day out' business inhibitor that has to be solved,"…"The good thing is people are aware of the issue and understand that the end-user experience can't be compromised."  In another recent survey from Gomez, statistics show that almost one-third of consumers will abandon a slow site within 1 or 5 seconds.  I could relate this to an impatient society but I’d have to include myself.  That same survey found that 39% said speed rather than functionality was more important to a web site.

And one from Confucius: Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.

ps

The CloudFucius Series: Intro, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21

Related:

• Cloud performance issues costing firms €600,000 a year
• Companies struggling with cloud performance
• Cloud apps cost firms £500,000 a year in poor performance
• New Survey From Compuware Gomez Reveals Consumers Will Quickly Abandon Slow Websites
• Network Optimization Won’t Fix Application Performance in the Cloud
• Cloud Testing: The Next Generation
• Cloud Lets You Throw More Hardware at the Problem Faster
• CloudFucius Combines: Security and Acceleration
• The Cloud Computing – Application Acceleration Connection

Technorati Tags: F5, infrastructure 2.0, integration, cloud connect, Pete Silva, security, business, education, technology, application delivery, cloud, context-aware, infrastructure 2.0, automation, web, internet, blog

twitter: @psilvas 

Audio White Paper - Conquering Multi-Homed ISP Link Challenges

This White Paper explores the challenges that businesses face when deploying a multi-homed network and how the BIG-IP Link Controller provides a cost effective solution to not only manage availability, but also to optimize the performance of ISP connectivity in an operationally efficient manner.  Read full white paper here.  And click here for more F5 Audio.

  
Download now or listen on posterous

AudioWP_-_Conquering_Multi-Homed_ISP_Link_Challenges.mp3 (17159 KB)

ps

twitter: @psilvas

Technorati Tags: F5, infrastructure 2.0, integration, cloud connect, Pete Silva, security, business, education, technology, application delivery, intercloud, cloud, context-aware, infrastructure 2.0, automation, web, internet

Posted via web from psilva's prophecies