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Intel Sheds McAfee

September 14, 2016 by  
Filed under Security

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Intel has sold the Intel Security business for $3.5bn less than it paid for it six years ago.

Intel Security, previously and better known as McAfee, has been sold to private equity firm TPG for $4.2bn, despite Intel paying $7.7bn for it in 2010.

The chip firm will receive $3.1bn in cash as part of the transaction and retain a 49 per cent minority stake. TPG will take control with a 51 per cent stake, and will invest $1.1bn in the company.

Intel Security is based on the McAfee business and was renamed two years ago. The company will revert to the better known McAfee brand, despite John McAfee reportedly suing Intel over the use of his name.

The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2017, and Chris Young, general manager of Intel Security Group, will become CEO of McAfee.

Young described TPG in an open letter to stakeholders as a “seasoned technology investor” that was “attracted to our current momentum and long-term potential”.

He claimed that McAfee currently protects “more than a quarter of a billion endpoints” and more than 200 million consumers, and is present in two thirds of the world’s 2,000 largest companies.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich claimed that, despite the sale, security “remains important in everything we do at Intel”.

“We will continue to integrate industry-leading security and privacy capabilities in our products from the cloud to billions of smart, connected computing devices,” he added.

Bryan Taylor, a partner at TPG, said that the company had “long identified the cyber security sector, which has experienced strong growth due to the increasing volume and severity of cyber attacks, as one of the most important areas in technology”.

Intel’s acquisition of McAfee Security in 2010 was intended to enable the company to beef up security around PCs and sell McAfee antivirus and other security software around its core business.

However, the combination never worked as the money to be made in the security business became increasingly focused on the data center and cloud computing.

Courtesy-TheInq

Is Intel Going To Dump McAfee

July 8, 2016 by  
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Intel has run out of ideas about what it is going to do with it its security business and is apparently planning to flog it off.

Five years ago Intel bought McAfee for $7.7bn acquisition. Two years ago it re-branded it as Intel Security. There was talk about chip based security and how important this would be as the world moved to the Internet of Things.

Now the company has discussed the future of Intel Security with bankers, including potentially the outfit. The semiconductor company has been shifting its focus to higher-growth areas, such as chips for data center machines and Internet-connected devices, as the personal-computer market has declined.

The security sector has seen a lot of interest from private equity buyers. Symantec said earlier this month it was acquiring Web security provider Blue Coat for $4.65 billion in cash, in a deal that will see Silver Lake, an investor in Symantec, enhancing its investment in the merged company, and Bain Capital, majority shareholder in Blue Coat, reinvesting $750 million in the business through convertible notes.

However Intel’s move into the Internet of Things does make it difficult for it to exit the security business completely. In fact some analysts think it will only sell of part of the business and keep some key bits for itself.

Courtesy-Fud

Are Some IoT Gadgets Pointless?

November 30, 2015 by  
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The man who first coined the term “Internet of Things” (IoT) has hit out at the bastardisation of the concept, calling on UK developers to lead the charge on making it a reality.

In an address on day two of Microsoft’s Future Decoded event in London, Kevin Ashton showed examples of supposed IoT devices such as the wine bottle that tells you if you’re drunk and the toothbrush that tells you if you’ve brushed your teeth.

Describing Kickstarter as “where bad ideas go to get funded”, he talked about the true nature of IoT and its roots in machine-to-machine communication that’s neither accessed nor processed by humans.

“This information isn’t going on a spreadsheet or a pivot table,” he explained. “It’s a sensor on a device in the world sending data to another device which makes a decision which feeds out into the world.”

In short: “We don’t collect data. Machines collect data from sensors and we turn the world into data.”

The perfect example of this is the mobile phone. “We call a phone a phone for legacy reasons,” he said. “A phone is just an app on your device. You probably use Candy Crush or Angry Birds more than you use it for actual calls. What a smartphone actually is, is a wireless sensor platform.”

He said that historically the UK has been at the forefront of internet developments, so it’s only right that the country takes a leading role in the evolution of the IoT.

Citing self-driving cars as a good example of the IoT at work, he predicted that by 2030 such vehicles will be the norm, and that the question should not be “Are self-driving cars safe?” but “Are human-driven cars safe?”, pointing out that 3,000 people are killed on the roads every day by human-driven cars, and so far at least, there have been no serious accidents involving autonomous vehicles.

Courtesy-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/are-some-iot-gadgets-pointless.html

Will The IoT Market Value Reach 330 Billion By 2025?

November 25, 2015 by  
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Beancounters working for analysts Navigant Research have added up some numbers and divided by their shoe size and decided that global revenues from residential IoT devices expected to total more than $330 billion by 2025.

These are devices like smart thermostats that allow users to remotely control household temperatures or LED lights that can be switched on and off from a smartphone. Basically it is the same thing as the IoT concept in the residential setting.

Navigant Research, global revenue from shipments of residential IoT devices is expected to total more than US$330 billion from 2015-2025. That is a lot of talking fridges and Internet connected underware.

Neil Strother, principal research analyst with Navigant Research said that the IoT is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without any edge pieces, with the number of pieces growing exponentially into the billions.

“Communicating devices in the IoT traverse a wide range of industries and sectors-virtually all areas of life can expect to see some form of this connected world.”

Despite the many drivers for the residential IoT market, there are at present multiple protocols and standards that are creating an interoperability barrier, he said.
Wi-Fi, ZigBee, Bluetooth, and others are all vying for market viability, which is creating confusion for consumers and stalling overall adoption, he said.

Courtesy-Fud

Is China The Fastest Growing Market For IoT?

November 5, 2015 by  
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China’s Internet of Things (IoT) services revenues will grow faster than anywhere else in the world, according to beancounters working at ABI Research.

ABI has added up the numbers and divided by its shoe size and multiplied by the age of its youngest child and worked out that China’s IoT market will grow more than five times in the next five years, exceeding $41 billion by 2020.

Dan Shey, VP and IoT practice director at ABI Research said that driving China’s IoT numbers is the smart meter segment.

“It leads all other segments in both connections and revenues. In fact, by 2020, smart meter connections will exceed the next highest market segment in total connections by nearly 10 to 1.”

Other major segments driving the China IoT market are home security and automation, OEM telematics, video surveillance, home appliances, aftermarket telematics and home monitoring.
Home monitoring is expected to become an important market in China as it attempts to care for its aging population, which will reach nearly 340 million people in 2020 for citizens age 55 and older.

“Data analytics revenues will generate the most IoT revenues in China. This statistic is reflective of the sheer volume of smart meter connections,” Shey said.

This is indicative of the relative lack of revenues in both platform and professional services in the China market.

“Platform revenues are not as high due to, for example, a higher share of proprietary embedded telematics deployments, especially by domestic OEM brands. Professional services revenues are similarly not as high, not only due to fewer connections in the telematics segments, with a higher proportion of tethered solutions, but also because IT and consultancy services are not as mature a market segment as in some of the more developed world markets such as Japan, South Korea and the US,” he wrote.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/is-china-the-fastest-growing-market-for-iot.html

IBM Makes Carbon Nanotube Breakthrough

October 16, 2015 by  
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IBM’S research and development department has announced “a major engineering breakthrough” in transistor technology that could transform the mobile device space as we know it, especially wearables.

IBM scientists demonstrated a new way to shrink transistor contacts in chips, thus speeding up the replacing of silicon transistors with carbon nanotubes which the firm has been working on for several years.

The company said that the breakthrough brings it closer to creating fully scaled carbon nanotube technology that will power future computing technologies while increasing performance and “opening a pathway to dramatically faster, smaller and more powerful chips”.

Carbon nanotube chips have many benefits over traditional silicon. Transistors in silicon are approaching a point of physical limitation. They have been made smaller year after year, but shrinking the size of the transistor, including the channels and contacts, without compromising performance is becoming increasingly difficult.

Carbon nanotube chips could improve the capabilities of high-performance computers because they allow these contacts to be so small that they are virtually transparent.

This means that the size of the semiconductor can decrease dramatically, while the substrate of carbon nanotubes makes the chip more energy efficient and is a soft and flexible material that could allow new device form factors.

Shu-jen Han, IBM’s manager of nanoscale science and technology, told us in an interview that wearable technology is one of the most exciting areas that this technology could transform owing to the unique property of the substrate, allowing new form factors with better performance and battery life.

However, the breakthrough isn’t about the carbon nanotube material being a better replacement for silicon, but more of an engineering innovation that addresses part of the problem in successfully rolling out better performing and more efficient chips.

“We know what the issue has been, and the limits of the technology, for years. What we solved here is a device-level issue, a one-dimensional structure. We need to make a wafer of them, a high-quality wafer, which does not exist yet,” Shu-jen said.

The next stage for IBM’s research group is to scale up the carbon nanotube technology to make reliable mass produced chips before they can make a difference to businesses and consumers.

Shu-jen said this could take five to 10 years, but could enable big data to be analysed faster and allow cloud data centres to deliver services more efficiently and economically.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/ibm-makes-carbon-nanotube-breakthrough.html

Does AVG Respect Your Privacy?

October 1, 2015 by  
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AVG has been answering questions about its new privacy policy after accusations that the firm is about to sell its users down the river.

A Reddit discussion has heard from furious users who spotted that the simplified policy effectively gives the company permission to sell its mailing lists to third parties for fun and profit.

AVG stated under ‘Do You Share My Data?’ in the Q&A about the new policy, which is automatically enforced on 15 October: “Yes, though when and how we share it depends on whether it is personal data or non-personal data. AVG may share non-personal data with third parties and may publicly display aggregate or anonymous information.”

AVG has hit back at the criticism in a blog post today, by which we mean confirmed that its stance is correct, explaining: “Usage data allows [AVG] to customize the experience for customers and share data with third parties that allow them to improve or develop new products.

“Knowing that 10 million users like a certain TV program gives broadcasters the data to get producers to make more of that type of program.

“This is also how taxi firms know how to distribute their fleets, and how advertisers know where to place banners and billboards, for example. Even at AVG, we have published non-personal information that we have collected regarding app performance.”

But AVG added in big, bold type: “We do not, and will not, sell personally identifiable data to anyone, including advertisers.”

This will placate some, but others fear that the lack of choice over this matter, which requires an active decision to opt out, is too clandestine. As ever, there are threats to move to everything from Linux Mint to the Commodore 64, some more serious than others.

Several Redditors have likened it to similar warnings in Windows 10′s Insider Programme which essentially say: ‘we can track you … but we won’t, unless we do.’

Courtesy-TheInq

IBM And ARM Team Up For IoT

September 15, 2015 by  
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IBM is teaming up with ARM to offer device and risk management for the internet of things.

For those who came in late, IBM has an IoT Foundation cloud platform. Under the deal it will be linked to ARM’s mbed-enabled devices to deliver analytics services.

It is a little odd given that both of them make and design chipsets, but they think that the fusion will enable far more data produced by autonomous IoT devices to be gathered, analysed and acted on.

Products powered by ARM’s mbed chips will automatically register with the IoT Foundation on the SoftLayer infrastructure is built and connect with IBM’s cloud analytics services.

IoT Foundation already includes analytics tools designed to cope with the big data explosion, access to IBM’s Bluemix platform as a service, and security systems.

ARM said that connecting the two would enable delivery of actionable events to control equipment, or alerts and information to users, such as alarm messages on domestic appliances.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/ibm-and-arm-are-teaming-up-for-iot.html

Intel’s Security Exec Jumps Ship

December 18, 2014 by  
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Michael Fey has left Intel Security Group to become chief operating officer at Blue Coat. Blue Coat is apparently not the traditional garb of a British Holiday Camp entertainer, but apparently a privately owned network security company.

Fey was one of the few top McAfee managers to stay with the company after it was bought by Intel in 2011. McAfee is now part of Intel Security Group, where Fey had been chief technology officer. Fey said that his role at Blue Coat would be “very similar” to his old job but he was allowed to focus on the cloud and the advanced threats space more.

“Blue Coat had tremendous growth behind the scenes and now I get to focus on taking that growth and trying to get it to the billion-dollar revenue mark,” he told Reuters.

Since the $7.7 billion acquisition by Intel, McAfee has lost senior managers and key talent in technology development, research and sales. At Blue Coat, Fey will replace David Murphy, who will stay on as a strategic adviser to the board.

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McAfee’s Biometric Software Coming Soon

December 9, 2014 by  
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A McAfee security product that will use biometric technology to authenticate users will be available for download by the end of the year, said Kirk Skaugen, senior vice president and general manager of the PC Client Group at Intel, last week.

“Your biometrics basically eliminate the need for you to enter passwords for Windows log in and eventually all your websites ever again,” Skaugen said.

Further product details were not immediately available. But one of the major inconveniences in using PCs and tablets is remembering passwords, which biometrics can tame.

An average user has about 18 passwords and biometric authentication will make PCs easier to use, Skaugen said.

Biometric authentication isn’t new. It’s being used in Apple Pay, where fingerprint authentication helps authorize credit card payments through the iPhone or iPad. Intel has been working on multiple forms of biometric authentication through fingerprint, gesture, face and voice recognition.

McAfee is owned by Intel, and the chip maker is building smartphone, tablet and PC technology that takes advantage of the security software. Intel has also worked on biometric technology for wearable devices like SMS Audio’s BioSport In-Ear Headphones, which can measure a person’s heart rate.

Intel also wants to make PCs and tablets easier to use through wireless charging, display, docking and data transfers. Such capabilities would eliminate the need to carry power brick and cables for displays and data transfers. Such capabilities will start appearing in laptops next year with sixth-generation Core chips code-named Skylake, which will be released in the second half.

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