Archive for March 2012
Big States (And Countries) Need Big Computers
IBM’s been on a roll with the supercomputer situation of late.
Last week, we announced the installation of a Blue Gene supercomputer at Rutgers, and earlier today, we discovered that the IBM Blue Gene supercomputer is coming to my great home state of Texas.
Specifically, IBM announced a partnership with Houston’s Rice University to build the first award-winning IBM Blue Gene supercomputer in Texas.
Rice also announced a related collaboration agreement with the University of Sao Paul (USP) in Brazil to initiate the shared administration and use of the Blue Gene supercomputer, which allows both institutions to share the benefits of the new computing resource.
Rice University and IBM today announced a partnership to build the first award-winning IBM Blue Gene supercomputer in Texas. Rice also announced a related collaboration agreement with the University of Sao Paulo (USP) in Brazil to initiate the shared administration and use of the Blue Gene supercomputer, which allows both institutions to share the benefits of the new computing resource.
Now, you all play nice as you go about all that protein folding analysis!
Rice faculty indicated they would be using the Blue Gene to further their own research and to collaborate with academic and industry partners on a broad range of science and engineering questions related to energy, geophysics, basic life sciences, cancer research, personalized medicine and more.
“Collaboration and partnership have a unique place in Rice’s history as a pre-eminent research university, and it is fitting that Rice begins its second century with two innovative partnerships that highlight the university’s commitments to expanding our international reach, strengthening our research and building stronger ties with our home city,” said Rice President David Leebron about the deal.
USP is Brazil’s largest institution of higher education and research, and Rodas said the agreement represents an important bond between Rice and USP. “The joint utilization of the supercomputer by Rice University and USP, much more than a simple sharing of high-tech equipment, means the strength of an effective partnership between both universities,” explained USP President Joao Grandino Rodas.
Unlike the typical desktop or laptop computer, which have a single microprocessor, supercomputers typically contain thousands of processors. This makes them ideal for scientists who study complex problems, because jobs can be divided among all the processors and run in a matter of seconds rather than weeks or months.
Supercomputers are used to simulate things that cannot be reproduced in a laboratory — like Earth’s climate or the collision of galaxies — and to examine vast databases like those used to map underground oil reservoirs or to develop personalized medical treatments.
USP officials said they expect their faculty to use the supercomputer for research ranging from astronomy and weather prediction to particle physics and biotechnology.
In 2009, President Obama recognized IBM and its Blue Gene family of supercomputers with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the most prestigious award in the United States given to leading innovators for technological achievement.
Including the Blue Gene/P, Rice has partnered with IBM to launch three new supercomputers during the past two years that have more than quadrupled Rice’s high-performance computing capabilities.
The addition of the Blue Gene/P doubles the number of supercomputing CPU hours that Rice can offer. The six-rack system contains nearly 25,000 processor cores that are capable of conducting about 84 trillion mathematical computations each second. When fully operational, the system is expected to rank among the world’s 300 fastest supercomputers as measured by the TOP500 supercomputer rankings.
Tiger Woods and Don Draper: Back In Business
Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is back in business, as “Mad Men” kicked off its long-anticipated fifth season last evening on AMC.
And so was Tiger Woods, who started pulling magic iron shots from his pixie-dusted golf bag yesterday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, leaving Irish lad Graeme McDowell babbling in his Tiger mid-iron dust.
Tiger Woods is back, ladies and gentlemen, and the Master’s is just around the corner!
I’ll spare you all the nitty gritty details, but if you’re a golf fan, and you watched his final round yesterday, you know of which I speak.
The old Tiger Woods has been replaced by a newer, more mature Tiger Woods, one who can maintain the celebrated spontaneity of golf while working through a tough track like Bay Hill with utter precision.
Though McDowell’s putter was zoning in from the next Florida county yesterday, it still wasn’t a match for Tiger’s laser precise approach irons, the kind that can make a grown mid-teen handicapper weep.
Who needs to sink long putts when you can hit a Nike ball 185 yards and put it four feet from the hole for a virtual gimme??!
I just hope Arnold Palmer is feeling better. The golfing “King” and Bay Hill host had to be taken to the hospital due to some blood pressure issues yesterday afternoon and so wasn’t there to offer up Woods’ his seventh Bay Hill title.
But that’s okay…today, Arnold’s expected to be resting at home, and Tiger’s back in the hunt and celebrating his first PGA Tour victory in two and a half years.
Much as many of us liked beating up on him while he was gone, we couldn’t be happier to see him not only playing, but fiercely competitive, once again.
As for my thoughts about Don Draper and company…well, that one will require further fermentation before I can offer any cogent comment. Shaken, not stirred.
Personalizing Cancer Treatment
I hate cancer. I really hate it.
I mean really. Really really really.
I’ve lost more friends and family to cancer than I care to count. I’ve lost an uncle to cancer. My two aunts. My grandfather. My grandmother.
IBM's Watson technology is being put to new use in personalizing cancer treatments in a partnership with world-renowned cancer treatment provider, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
In the last year, I’ve lost two good friends, and another one before them, several years ago, all wayyy too early (early 30s to mid 40s).
I hate cancer.
So I was pretty stoked about our announcement yesterday where my virtual brother, as Scott and I recently joked with Watson GM Manoj Saxena, is getting another form of unemployment.
First, there was Watson’s gig at Wellpoint, helping doctors with diagnoses. Then we learned Watson was heading to work at Citibank to help out on Wall Street.
Now Watson is being put to use at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in an effort to help oncologists obtain detailed diagnostic and treatment options based on updated research that will help them decide how best to care for an individual patient.
MSKCC’s world-renowned oncologists will assist in developing IBM Watson to use a patient’s medical information and synthesize a vast array of continuously updated and vetted treatment guidelines, published research and insights gleaned from the deep experience of MSKCC clinicians to provide those individualized recommendations to doctors. It will also help provide users with a detailed record of the data and evidence used to reach the recommendations?
You can learn more about this new evidence-based approach to cancer treatment in the video below.
Oncology treatment is a complex arena, and yet cancers are the second most common cause of death in the U.S., second only to heart disease.
In fact, the American Cancer Society projects that 1.6 million new cancer cases will be diagnosed in the U.S. this year with outcomes varying wildly across the country.
Cancer isn’t a single disease with one footprint of cause, but rather, with some having hundreds of sub-types, each with a different genetic fingerprint.
Significant discoveries in molecular biology and genetics in the past two decades have delivered new insights into cancer biology and strategies for targeting specific molecular alterations in tumors. But in the process, these advances have also ratcheted up the complexity of diagnosing and treating each case.
“This comprehensive, evidence-based approach will profoundly enhance cancer care by accelerating the dissemination of practice-changing research at an unprecedented pace,” said Dr. Mark G. Kris, Chief, Thoracic Oncology Service at MSKCC and one of the clinicians leading the development effort. He noted that 85 percent of patients with cancer are not treated at specialized medical centers and it can take years for the latest developments in oncology to reach all practice settings.
Warning Against Your Insecurities: The 2011 IBM X-Force Trend And Risk “Poltergeist”
WARNING: This is an exceptionally long post intended for security and privacy geeks everywhere, including sys admins, Internet security hawks, CIOs, and innocent but interested bystanders everywhere. No web servers were hacked in the preparation of this report: at least, none by me!
Okay, troopers, it’s that time of year again. You know, the time when IBM releases its report card for security incidents, the X-Force Trend and Risk Report.
Google has the search “Zeitgeist” every year, we have the security “poltergeist!”
This time around, we’re looking back at the wild and wacky 2011, a year which showed surprising improvements in several areas of Internet security. Improvements, you ask? Surely you jest, Turbo.
This figure from the 2011 IBM X-Force Trend And Risk Report shows a steady decline in the instances of input control related vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection since X-Force began recording these statistics in 2007. In 2011, the statistics suggest that the likelihood of encountering XSS in a given test continues to decrease but shows signs of leveling out at approximately a 40 percent chance of occurring. Injection vulnerabilities and specifically SQL injection appears to have leveled out at around a 20 percent chance of occurring in a given test.
No, no, there IS some good news. Like a reduction in application security vulnerabilities, exploit code and spam.
But, good news leads to less good news on this front, as many of you who follow security well know, because the bad guys are being forced to rethink their tactics by targeting more niche IT loopholes and emerging technologies such as social networks and mobile devices.
The Top Line: Less Spam, More Adaptation
To get specific, the X-Force 2011 Trend and Risk Report demonstrated a 50 percent decline in spam email compared to 2010.
2011’s poltergeist saw a diligent patching of security vulnerabilities by software vendors, with only 36 percent of those vulnerabilities remaining unpatched in 2011 (compared to 43 percent in 2010). The year also saw a higher quality of software application code, as seen in web-app vulnerabilities called “cross-site scripting” that were half as likely to exist in clients’ software as they were four years ago.
So, the net is, the bad guys are adapting their techniques to the changing tech environment. The report uncovered a rise in emerging attack trends including mobile exploits, automated password guessing, and a surge in phishing attacks.
It also witnessed an increase in automated shell command injection attacks against web servers, which may well be a response to successful efforts to close off other kinds of Web app vulnerabilities.
The Security Landscape Glass Half Full: Decrease In Unpatched Vulnerabilities, Exploit Code, And Spam
Getting even more specific, according to the report, there are several positive trends as companies adjusted their security policies in 2011:
- Thirty percent decline in the availability of exploit code. When security vulnerabilities are disclosed, exploit code is sometimes released that attackers can download and use to break into computers. Approximately 30 percent fewer exploits were released in 2011 than were seen on average over the past four years. This improvement can be attributed to architectural and procedural changes made by software developers that help make it more difficult for attackers to successfully exploit vulnerabilities.
- Decrease in unpatched security vulnerabilities. When security vulnerabilities are publicly disclosed, it is important that the responsible software vendor provide a patch or fix in a timely fashion. Some security vulnerabilities are never patched, but the percentage of unpatched vulnerabilities has been decreasing steadily over the past few years. In 2011 this number was down to 36 percent from 43 percent in 2010.
- Fifty percent reduction in cross site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities due to improvements in software quality. The IBM X-Force team is seeing significant improvement in the quality of software produced by organizations that use tools like IBM AppScan OnDemand service to analyze, find, and fix vulnerabilities in their code. IBM found XSS vulnerabilities are half as likely to exist in customers’ software as they were four years ago. However, XSS vulnerabilities still appear in about 40 percent of the applications IBM scans. This is still high for something well understood and able to be addressed.
- Decline in spam. IBM’s global spam email monitoring network has seen about half the volume of spam email in 2011 that was seen in 2010. Some of this decline can be attributed to the take-down of several large spam botnets, which likely hindered spammers’ ability to send emails. The IBM X-Force team witnessed spam evolve through several generations over the past seven years as spam filtering technology has improved and spammers have adapted their techniques in order to successfully reach readers.
The Security Landscape Glass Half Empty: Attackers Adapt Their Techniques in 2011
Even with these improvements, there has been a rise in new attack trends and an array of significant, widely reported external network and security breaches.
This figure from the 2011 IBM X-Force Trend And Risk Report shows an increase in mobile operating system exploits in 2011 due to an uptick in malicious activity targeting mobile devices. Because of the two-tiered relationship between phone end users, telecommunications companies, and mobile operating system vendors, disclosed mobile vulnerabilities can remain unpatched on phones for an extended period of time, providing a large window of opportunity to attackers.
As malicious attackers become increasingly savvy, the IBM X-Force documented increases in three key areas of attack activity:
- Attacks targeting shell command injection vulnerabilities more than double. For years, SQL injection attacks against web applications have been a popular vector for attackers of all types. SQL injection vulnerabilities allow an attacker to manipulate the database behind a website. As progress has been made to close those vulnerabilities – the number of SQL injection vulnerabilities in publicly maintained web applications dropped by 46 percent in 2011– some attackers have now started to target shell command injection vulnerabilities instead. These vulnerabilities allow the attacker to execute commands directly on a web server. Shell command injection attacks rose by two to three times over the course of 2011. Web application developers should pay close attention to this increasingly popular attack vector.
- Spike in automated password guessing – Poor passwords and password policies have played a role in a number of high-profile breaches during 2011. There is also a lot of automated attack activity on the Internet in which attacks scan the net for systems with weak login passwords. IBM observed a large spike in this sort of password guessing activity directed at secure shell servers (SSH) in the later half of 2011.
- Increase in phishing attacks that impersonate social networking sites and mail parcel services – The volume of email attributed to phishing was relatively small over the course of 2010 and the first half of 2011, but phishing came back with a vengeance in the second half, reaching volumes that haven’t been seen since 2008. Many of these emails impersonate popular social networking sites and mail parcel services, and entice victims to click on links to web pages that may try to infect their PCs with malware. Some of this activity can also be attributed to advertising click fraud, where spammers use misleading emails to drive traffic to retail websites.
Emerging Technologies Create New Avenues for Attacks
New technologies such as mobile and cloud computing continue to create challenges for enterprise security.
- Publicly released mobile exploits rise 19 percent in 2011. This year’s IBM X-Force report focused on a number of emerging trends and best practices to manage the growing trend of “Bring your Own Device,” or BYOD, in the enterprise. IBM X-Force reported a 19 percent increase over the prior year in the number of exploits publicly released that can be used to target mobile devices. There are many mobile devices in consumers’ hands that have unpatched vulnerabilities to publicly released exploits, creating an opportunity for attackers. IT managers should be prepared to address this growing risk.
- Attacks increasingly relate to social media – With the widespread adoption of social media platforms and social technologies, this area has become a target of attacker activity. IBM X-Force observed a surge in phishing emails impersonating social media sites. More sophisticated attackers have also taken notice. The amount of information people are offering in social networks about their personal and professional lives has begun to play a role in pre-attack intelligence gathering for the infiltration of public and private sector computing networks.
- Cloud computing presents new challenges - Cloud computing is moving rapidly from emerging to mainstream technology, and rapid growth is anticipated through the end of 2013. In 2011, there were many high profile cloud breaches affecting well-known organizations and large populations of their customers. IT security staff should carefully consider which workloads are sent to third-party cloud providers and what should be kept in-house due to the sensitivity of data. Cloud security requires foresight on the part of the customer as well as flexibility and skills on the part of the cloud provider. The IBM X-Force report notes that the most effective means for managing security in the cloud may be through Service Level Agreements (SLAs) because of the limited impact that an organization can realistically exercise over the cloud computing service. Therefore, careful consideration should be given to ownership, access management, governance and termination when crafting SLAs. The IBM X-Force report encourages cloud customers to take a lifecycle view of the cloud deployment and fully consider the impact to their overall information security posture.
The IBM X-Force 2011 Trend and Risk Report is based on intelligence gathered by one of the industry’s leading security research teams through its research of public vulnerability disclosures findings from more than 4,000 clients, and the monitoring and analysis of an average of 13 billion events daily in 2011.
“In 2011, we’ve seen surprisingly good progress in the fight against attacks through the IT industry’s efforts to improve the quality of software,” said Tom Cross, manager of Threat Intelligence and Strategy for IBM X-Force. “In response, attackers continue to evolve their techniques to find new avenues into an organization. As long as attackers profit from cyber crime, organizations should remain diligent in prioritizing and addressing their vulnerabilities.”
You can learn more about IBM Security Solutions here.
No Bull! IBM Marketing Innovation Summit 2012
I’m heading back to one of my favorite cities in the world in May, to Madrid.
Turbo during his first visit to Madrid in June 2008, where he visited the world-famous Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas, the "home" of bullfighting in Spain.
I first visited Madrid traveling on business in June 2008, an auspicious time to be there, as the UEFA Euro 2008 tournament was quickly winding down to a conclusion.
One night, June 10th to be precise, my IBM cabal and I were looking for a small bar or restaurant to take in the Spain v. Russia match, when we heard a loud cheer go up in unison across the city.
“Spain one, Russia nil,” I announced.
That echo sent chills down my spine, as did the wild celebration later that evening after Spain trounced Russia 4-1. Spain later went on to win the whole shebang in a 1-0 final over Germany.
Anyhoo, enough reminiscing.
If you’ve never visited Madrid, I’m going to provide you with an excellent raison: The IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit 2012.
From May 22-24, the IBM Smarter Commerce will be the most significant European gathering of marketing professionals in a single place, one filled with four days of learning, networking, and exploring best practices in the commerce realm.
If you need some convincing with your boss, download the “Top 5 Reasons to Attend.”
They go like this:
1. You get to network with Turbo.
2. You get to hang at the hotel bar with Turbo.
Oh, wait. That was a different list.
Anyway, once you preview the sessions with your boss you won’t have to do much convincing.
Here’s a couple of session titles that jumped right out at me: “Beyond Dashboards: Driving Marketing Returns With Digital Analytics.”
Or how about this one: “Tag Management Zen: Using Tags To Drive Innovation.”
Or even this: “Social Media & Mobile Marketing: Moving From Siloed to Intertwined.”
They’re going to have to drag me away kicking and screaming.
Here’s the bottom line page: Register here.
Before April 1, you only have to pay 895 Euros, at which point it goes up to 1195 Euros.
In the meantime, keep an eye out here on the Turbo blog, as I expect I’ll be passing along some travel tips (including restaurant and sightseeing recommendations) for Madrid.
Big Data, Bigger Business Opportunity
IBM today is making some significant announcements in the business analytics realm that builds on the already $16+ billion the company has already invested in smarter intelligence over the last half decade.
Smarter business analytics and intelligence is an idea whose time has come. Even as the global economy strengthens organizations are faced with difficult choices: Many are still being asked to do more work with less — less people, less investment, less of everything — and so we find ourselves at a crossroads.
Do we continue to do business the way we’ve done so for the past half century, one that was generally based upon a presumption of generous abundance?
Or, do we begin to acknowledge instead an abundance of scarcity — in natural resources, in human talent, in financial capital — and instead start to work “smarter,” to use technology to help us better understand and make — or as may often be the case, “remake” — the world around us?
Big data is the digital convergence of structured data found inside databases, and unstructured data flowing from new sources like social networks, mobile devices, sensors, RFID, smart meters and financial systems. Today in NYC and London, IBM announced new consulting services and software that takes the power of predictive analytics to new levels of impact against C-suite decision makers' highest priority issues.
The Coming Information Gusher
As IBM CEO Ginny Rometty outlined in our recent annual report, “the world is uniquely positioned to deliver the benefits of a vast new natural resource — a gusher of data from both man-made and natural systems that can now be tapped to help businesses and institutions succeed in an increasingly complex and dynamic global economy.”
This “gusher” is one of the most exciting and game-changing phenomena to arrive on the scene since the advent of the microprocessor. But it’s arrival will be both opportunity and disruptor, and how organizations choose to take advantage of this new natural resource may well be the determining factor in shaping their destiny.
What problem in the world, you may be asking, are we trying to solve? The much better question may be, what problem in the world are we not trying to solve?
Why Are We Spending So Much To Get So Little?
The healthcare industry spends $250-300 billion on healthcare fraud, per year, some $650 million per day in the U.S. alone? Is that a gap that we can really afford to ignore in such a resource-constrained world?
Or how about the retail business, where, according to the IHL Group, we see $165 billion in missed sales each year due to company supplies being mismatched with the needs of customer demand. Is that money the retailing industry can really afford to leave on the storeroom table?
In a world where natural resources become increasingly scarce, even as the often unstructured data generated about the use and consumption of those resources is delivered in abundance, the ability to act and act quickly upon those insights will itself become a scarcity.
Those organizations are able to act on such information quickly and efficiently will find themselves in increasingly circumscribed company, and will soon be putting distance between themselves and their competition.
This is why today, in New York City at the IBM Smarter Analytics Leadership Summit, IBM is convening 100 business leaders to talk about the next big bets and emerging categories being driven into front office operations of global organizations.
As part of the forum, IBM is announcing new consulting services and software that marry the latest advances in predictive analytics with the power of big data. Specifically, we’re working to help address the highest-priority issues of C-suite decision makers — managing financial operations, decreasing fraud and improving customer relationships.
These new solutions will be delivered by IBM consultants, supported by applications management services as well as cloud offerings.
Our customers are the biggest proponents of this new direction. Check out the video below to hear how the University of California has reduced its cost of risk and saved nearly half a billion dollars over six years using IBM Smarter Analytics.
Donald Takes Golf’s Transitions
Almost from day one of 2012, I predicted it was going to be a stellar year for golf.
Don’t ask me how I know these things. They just come to me.
As I watched the lead ebb and flow for the Transitions tournament over the weekend — first with Padraig Harrington, then later, Ernie Els (who needed the win to NOT miss the Masters for the first time since 1994), then finally, in a four-way playoff, world number two Luke Donald…well, the Transitions was just another in a series of nail-biting golf tournaments.
For you non-golf fans reading this, who think golf on TV is about as exciting as watching paint dry, go back to watching “Doomsday Preppers.”
But for the golf fans…well, I could almost do the wave standing right downstairs in my living room.
Yes, I felt horrible for Ernie when he missed that short putt on 18 to keep him in the playoff, but heavens to Betsy, next thing you know we’ve got four stellar golfers in a playoff on 18: Luke Donald, Robert Garrigus, Jim Furyk, and South Korean upstart Sang Moon-Bae, who’s got one of the most beautiful swings I’ve seen in years.
Donald proved he’s the man to beat, and steals his first place world ranking back from Rory McIlroy nary two weeks after Rory took it from him.
Can you say “The Masters Is In Two Weeks?”
Unfortunately, I’m going to be away from civilization that weekend. I’ve got some guns to go shoot with the boys out in West Texas. But if anyone can think of a way for Turbo to keep up with the Masters in a far, remote, desolate West Texas location, I’m all ears. Smoke signals, anyone?
I’ll have it all recording on the DVR, you can be sure of that.
And in the meantime, we have Arnie’s Bay Hill Classic “Arnold Palmer Invitational” this week, where the top four golfers of the world do NOT include Tiger, Vijay, Phil or Ernie. None of them are even in the top 10!
Boy, how the sport of golf changes, and fast.
My hope is to see these four in a playoff down in Florida this weekend!
turbotodd
