Structure News: Can Michael Dell pull off one last miracle?

Your weekly tech news roundup, with a little bit of Structure. Where The Headphone Jack Lives Forever September 9th, 2016 / by Tom Krazit This week, we'll talk about some of the big gambles that aging enterprise tech companies are making, why you should protect your information like the Secret Service protects the White House, and how ransomware appears to be getting worse. BIG PICTURE There was a time -- one that must baffle those still on the happy side of their first boom-bust tech cycle -- when Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Intel ruled the tech world. While they're all still alive and kicking, they're not setting the pace, and the moves they make over the next year or two are critical. All three companies have good reason to be proud of the contributions they've made to technology. But they have made some questionable decisions trying to extend their run at the top of the tech food chain, and Intel and HPE decided this week to cut some of those losses. Intel sold a controlling stake in Intel Security, offloading the unitformerly known as McAfeefor $4.2 billion after acquiring it for $7.6 billion in 2011. HP sold $8.8 billion worth of software assets, with CEO Meg Whitman telling The New York Times "there are elements of our world that are shrinking." That might be an understatement. But Intel and HP's gambles on security and software pale in comparison to what Michael Dell is going to try and pull off, now that the historic $67 billion acquisition/merger of EMC and its associated companies is complete. It's really hard to see how this merger can end any other way but badly, which makes it all the more fascinating. (The Next Platform has a good overview of how Dell will try and pull this off.) Intel is in the best position to have an outsized impact in this new world, having shed decades of orthodoxy about chip design and manufacturing to embrace a more flexible business model that listens to its customers. HPE lacks a compelling story outside of its mysterious "Machine" project; I've been cracking up for weeks at the overly dramatic and unintentionally hilarious ads for its security services shown before Season 1 of Mr. Robot on Amazon Prime, and it just sold that division. And the new Dell Technologies, well, we're going to have to wait a bit to see how that goes. There are only a handful of companies that have navigated multiple transitions in computing across decades, and fewer still that have thrived amid those changes. As the pace of change gets faster and faster, that's not likely to change. STRUCTURE NEWS WHY CISOS SHOULD TAKE A PAGE FROM THE SECRET SERVICE WHEN SECURING THEIR NETWORKS There's no bigger target in the world than the President of the United States. Nathaniel Gleicher of Illumio (pictured), worked inside the White House for several years advising the Obama administration on information security matters, and thinks the Secret Service has some lessons to teach the information security community on how to protect high-value targets. Gleicher will expand on this idea in a talk at Structure Security, and this week he shared a bit of a preview of his upcoming remarks. Structure Security will take place September 27th and 28th at the Golden Gate Club in San Francisco. Gleicher is one of several speakers from some of the most innovative startups in the security world scheduled to appear at the conference, including Todd McKinnon of Okta, Stuart McClure of Cylance, and several others. More information on our speakers is here. INDUSTRY NEWS INTRODUCING DEEP LEARNING: BOOSTING SECURITY WITH AN ARTIFICIAL BRAIN Information Week's Dark Reading site has a nice overview of how deep learning techniques can be used to improve security, which well discuss in detail at Structure Security. Automating malware detection could allow us to find far more threats and find those threats faster than human oversight would allow. MICROSOFT WORKING ON SKYPE TEAMS, ITS OWN SLACK COMPETITOR. I had sort of thought that Microsoft's bet on workplace collaboration tools would come out of Yammer, but apparently the company is developing such a tool under the hood of another service it acquired: Skype. MSPoweruser reports that Microsoft's would-be Slack killer supports threaded conversations, which has to be one of the top feature requests thrown at Slack. EXASCALE MIGHT PROVE TO BE MORE THAN A GRAND CHALLENGE Looks like Fujitsu's huge exascale supercomputer project has hit a snag, as The Next Platform reports that the project has been delayed by at least a year. Avoiding delays on a project of that size is probably impossible, but those looking for ARM server processors operating at scale will have to wait even longer. THIS LEAKED CATALOG OFFERS WEAPONIZED INFORMATION THAT CAN FLOOD THE WEB The underground market for software exploits is full of interesting and shady characters, and Motherboard looks at one company that once advertised hacking services to basically anyone with money. It's not clear whether Aglaya's products or services did any damage (one person described them as "crap"), but there appears to be pretty strong demand for hacking tools. GOOGLE JUST BLEW UP ITS ALL-IN STRATEGY FOR PRODUCTIVITY SOFTWARE Google and Box cut a deal this week at BoxWorks to allow Google Apps users to work on documents stored in Box through Google's popular tools, according to IDG News Service. It's a user-friendly approach that acknowledges that some customers don't want to put all their eggs in one basket, and a nice coup for Box. HOW RANSOMWARE BECAME A BILLION-DOLLAR NIGHTMARE FOR BUSINESSES We've talked about the ransomware problem several times this year, and believe it or not, the situation does not appear to be improving. The Atlantic takes a look at the state of the ransomware market and how people and businesses can fight back against this scourge. QUOTE OF THE WEEK This is a change or die business and we absolutely know that and, you know, are prepared to change." Michael Dell, on CNBC, on his historic merger with EMC Click here to unsubscribe from this list. 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