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EMC’s Data Breach Cost $66 Million
Between April and June 2011, EMC spent $66 million handling the fallout from a March cyber attack against its systems, which resulted in the compromise of information relating to the SecurID two-factor authentication sold by EMC’s security division, RSA.
That clean-up figure was disclosed last week during an EMC earnings call, by David Goulden, the company’s chief financial officer. It doesn’t include post-breach expenses from the first quarter, when EMC began investigating the attack, hardening its systems, and working with customers to prevent their being exploited as a result of the attacks.
In spite of the breach, EMC reported strong second-quarter financial results, earning consolidated revenue of $4.85 billion, which is an increase of 20% compared with the same period one year ago. Meanwhile, second-quarter GAAP net income increased by 28% from the same period last year, to reach $546 million. The company saw large growth in its information infrastructure and virtual infrastructure products and services, including quarterly revenue increases of 19% for its information storage group.
Those results led executives to increase their financial outlook for 2011 and predict consolidated revenue in excess of $19.8 billion, which would be a 16% increase from EMC’s 2010 revenues of $17 billion.
Is Sprint’s Future Questionable?
August 4, 2011 by admin
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Sprint Nextel Corp’s shares fell sharply on Thursday as heavy subscriber losses in the second quarter called into question the strategy and outlook of the No. 3 U.S. wireless company.
Sprint had spent heavily to promote its service and better compete against larger carriers Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc. But that strategy backfired as profit margins eroded and customer losses persisted.
The weak results overshadowed Sprint’s announcement of a $9 billion network contract with start-up LightSquared, and sent the stock tumbling to its lowest point since February before recovering a little to close down 16 percent.
Investors questioned whether Sprint would be able to meet its 2011 targets after such a disappointing showing.
“Their cost of doing business went up dramatically,” said Piper Jaffray analyst Christopher Larsen. “People have less confidence they can meet expectations.”
Sprint’s operating profit margin of 16.3 percent was well below the average Wall Street estimate of around 19 percent as the company had changed its product rebate terms in an effort to combat Verizon Wireless’ sale of the Apple Inc iPhone, and an iPhone discount at AT&T.
But the bet did not pay off as Sprint still saw defections of 101,000 net subscribers — also known as post-paid customers — compared with analysts’ expectation for losses of 15,000.
SpyEye Poses Risk To Banking Defenses
Financial institutions are facing more trouble from SpyEye, a piece of malicious software that steals money from customers online bank accounts, according to new research from security vendor Trusteer.
SpyEye is a dastardly piece of malicious software: it can harvest credentials for online accounts and also initiate transactions as a person is logged into their account, literally making it possible to watch their bank balance drop by the second.
In its latest versions, SpyEye has been modified with new code designed to evade advanced systems banks have put in place to try and block fraudulent transactions, said Mickey Boodai, Trusteer’s CEO.
Banks are now analyzing how a person uses their site, looking at parameters such as how many pages a person looks at on the site, the amount of time a person spends on a page and the time it takes a person to execute a transaction. Other indicators include IP address, such as if a person who normally logs in from the Miami area suddenly logs in from St. Petersburg, Russia.
SpyEye works fast, and can automatically and quickly initiate a transaction much faster than an average person manually on the website. That’s a key trigger for banks to block a transaction. So SpyEye’s authors are now trying to mimic — albeit in an automated way — how a real person would navigate a website.
An Apple/Hulu Hookup In The Works?
Apple Inc is in very preliminary talks to join the bidding for Hulu, the online video site that Walt Disney Co, News Corp and its other owners have put up for sale, Bloomberg cited two anonymous sources as saying.
Apple has begun initial discussions that may eventually lead to an acquisition, Bloomberg reported without providing any more details.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the rumor.
Mobile Networks Near Capacity
July 23, 2011 by admin
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Mobile networks in North America are using 80 percent of capacity, with 36 percent of base stations facing capacity constraints, according to a survey by investment firm Credit Suisse.
Networks in other regions also are more than 50 percent utilized, with the global average at 65 percent, Credit Suisse said after surveying carriers around the world. That level of use matches the average “threshold” rate that would trigger the service providers to start buying more network equipment, the report said. Looking ahead, on average the carriers expected their utilization rate to grow to 70 percent within 12 months.
Credit Suisse used the results to predict new sales by makers of cellular equipment, such as Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens Networks and Huawei Technologies. But at a certain level, heavy use of a base station can also affect the mobile experience of individual subscribers. The survey found that 23 percent of base stations worldwide had capacity constraints (defined as a utilization rate over 80 percent during busy hours), while 36 percent in North America were under that kind of pressure.
The North American networks were 72 percent utilized two years ago. The region’s carriers expect the rate to ease back down to that point within two years. North American service providers are likely to buy more equipment soon, because having their networks 74 percent filled is the threshold rate in that region, the survey said.
nVidia’s Tegra 3 Coming To Smartphones
July 18, 2011 by admin
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It appears as though Nvidia’s next generation quad-core Kal-El (Tegra 3) quad core SoC will also show up on smartphones too. Originally, it was believed that the SoC would only support the ever growing tablet space.
Inside sources have confirmed that projects are already underway and that Tegra 3 aka Kal-El smartphones will be make a debut as well.
Nvidia had hoped to get a lot of play out of Tegra 2, unfortunately the chip was not as embraced as Nvidia had wanted. Even though the Tegra 2 SoC did manage to get a few design wins.
E-Readers More Popular Than Tablets
July 1, 2011 by admin
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More people are using e-readers than tablets, according to a Pew Research Institute study.
The Pew survey of 2,277 adults that finished on May 22 found that 12% of Americans owned an e-reader device in May compared to 8% who owned a tablet like Apple’s iPad.
Also, ownership grew faster for e-readers like the Nook or Kindle than ownership of tablets over the six months between November 2010 and May, the Pew survey found.
The telephone survey found that Hispanic Americans are the fastest-growing ownership group of both e-reader and tablet devices.
E-reader ownership increased from 6% of American adults in November 2010 to 12% in May, Pew said.
Tablet ownership grew from 5% to 8% over the same period. Tablet ownership had been increasing “relatively quickly” through Nov. 2010, Pew said, but growth was virtually flat from January to May, growing from only from 7% to 8%.
Pew also found that 3% of U.S. adults own both kinds of devices, while 9% own an e-reader but not a tablet, and 5% own a tablet but not an e-reader.
Citigroup Hackers Pocketed $2.7 million
June 29, 2011 by admin
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Citigroup suffered about $2.7 million in losses after cybercriminals uncovered a way to lift credit card numbers from its website and make fraudulent transactions.
Citi acknowledged the breach earlier this month, saying hackers had gained accessed to more than 360,000 Citi credit card accounts of U.S. customers. The hackers didn’t breach Citi’s main credit card processing system, but were reportedly able to obtain the numbers, along with the customers’ names and contact information, by logging into the Citi Account Online website and guessing account numbers.
Until now, it wasn’t revealed if any fraud had occurred as a result of the theft. But Citi confirmed Friday that there were losses of $2.7 million from about 3,400 accounts.
The bank has said its customers will not be liable for the fraudalent transactions and losses as a result of them.
Facebook Is Display Advertising King
Facebook’s U.S. advertising revenue will reach roughly $2.2 billion in 2011, toppling Yahoo Inc to collect the biggest portion of online display advertising dollars, according to a new study.
Facebook’s U.S. advertising revenue will give it a 17.7 percent share of the market for graphical display ads that appear on websites, according to a report released on Monday by research firm eMarketer.
Last year Facebook garnered 12.2 percent share of the U.S. market.
The figures highlights the growing clout of Facebook, the world’s No.1 Internet social network. It has seen its valuation soar to roughly $80 billion in recent transactions for its shares on the private markets as some investors anticipate it could have an initial public offering next year.
While Facebook has grabbed the top ranking, eMarketer analyst David Hallerman said the overall market for display ads, which include banner ads, video ads and Web page sponsorships, is growing robustly enough that it is benefiting numerous companies.
Verizon Ending Unlimited Data Plan In July
June 26, 2011 by admin
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We are closer to reaching the end of Verizon Wireless’s limited-time offer of unlimited data, says the Wall Street Journal‘s AllThingsD. The website reports that the wireless carrier plans to introduce new tiered pricing plans next month for new smartphone customers — including those buying Apple’s iPhone 4.
If true, the report hardly comes as a surprise. Back in January, when Verizon became the second carrier in the U.S. to offer iPhone service, the company said it would offer subscribers a $30-a-month unlimited data plan for the iPhone’s launch, but highlighted the fact that the offer was for a limited time only.