IBM's India lab develops disaster management tool
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Leveraging a software tool the company has used to assess its own preparedness for disaster, IBM is preparing to offer the Resiliency Maturity Index, a framework for calculating the ability of an enterprise to right itself after a variety of disaster, and for figuring out where disaster-recovery resources could be better allocated.
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IBM Monday introduced a security service that offers a concise, monthly global-network threat report designed to help organizations assess security needs and vulnerabilities from a business perspective.
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Scientists from about 150 countries have started work on an action plan to save lives during disasters through planning and warnings amid the shock over the Asian tsunami catastrophe.
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IBM and top scientific research  organizations are joining forces in a humanitarian effort to  tap the unused power of millions of computers and help solve  complex social problems.
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US researchers are turning to peer-to-peer technology to help in the wake of natural disasters.
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IBM on Monday unveiled a technology lab for customers looking to test the company&#39;s products for managing computer resources based on business demands.
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InfoWorld - IBM on Friday gave its autonomic computing strategy is boost unwrapping an enhanced version of a toolkit designed to help developers more quickly integrate a number of self-managing functions into their existing applications and services.
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IBM today introduced a security service that offers a concise, monthly global-network threat report designed to help organizations assess security needs and vulnerabilities from a business perspective.
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(InfoWorld) - Governments seeking inexpensive technology to warn of tsunamis could be interested in a free software application that monitors vibrations in the hard disks of computers in an attempt to detect the underseaÂ earthquakes that cause tsunamis. The Tsunami Harddisk Detector is the brainchild of Michael Stadler, who demonstrated the prototype system earlier this week at the Ars Electronica exhibition in Linz, Austria. As part of their operation, hard disks measure vibrations in order to keep the read-write head of the disk on track. These measurements can be read from some hard disks. The Tsunami Harddisk Detector captures this vibration data and shares it with computers in other locations connected via a peer-to-peer network to determine whether an earth tremor is occurring. In the p-to-p network, several participating computers act as supernodes, which analyze the data received from the other "sensing" nodes. The supernodes are able to ignore vibrations generated by a computer being kicked or shaken, by recording how many computers report the same vibrations simultaneously. If an earthquake that could lead to a tsunami is detected, the supernodes inform the other nodes. Computers running the client software and connected to the p-to-p network can then warn of such events. The software is able to provide such warnings because the seismic waves produced by earthquakes travel at about 5,000 kilometers per hour, while tsunamis move much slower at 500 to 1,000 kilometers per hour, Stadler explains on hisÂ Web site. The speed difference leaves time to evaluate tremors and, if necessary, warn of a tsunami. On his Web site, however, Stadler points out that his system is still in the experimental stage with some inherent problems and can't be fully relied on to provide a "serious prediction" of a tsunami risk in its present configuration.
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Mandiant introduced new incident response automation technology that promises to perform the first set of post-breach analysis tests the IT security company would provide via its breach investigation services.Having already launched several free forensics applications via its Web site, the breach consulting services provider is hoping to cash in on demand for its incident management skills with the new set of electronic evidence discovery (EED) and corporate investigation tools.Labeled as Mandiant Intelligent Response 1.0 (MIR) and targeted initially at large enterprises in the financial services, health care, and ISP verticals -- company officials contend that large customers are ready to invest in applications that could save them millions on post-breach analysis services."We think large and mid-tier enterprises have the capability to use this technology, those that are fortunate enough to have the type of people who can respond, but who might not have standing armies to do so," said Jim Hansen, chief operating officer of Mandiant. "These are difficult skills that we provide, and these tools allow customers to accelerate the response process before someone like us can get there."Hansen said that combined with his company's services, the incident forensics applications, delivered in an appliance form-factor, also extend the consulting provider's breach investigation capabilities.The faster that companies can begin the data mining and incident analysis process after a breach, the more likely they are to discover exactly what type of problem has occurred and deduce whether they might be forced to publicly report any data exposures, the expert contends.The cost of reporting data incidents -- both in terms of issuing immediate breach notifications and responding to any subsequent impact on business, including regulatory fines -- has created a market where enterprises with high-risk information and compliance concerns are ready to invest in software that may give them a leg up in the investigation process, Hansen said."This is a way to begin creating an incident response system with a full audit trail at the push of a button. [It's] something that's going to give teams a head start on the electronic data discovery process," said Hansen. "We're still doing a majority of our business answering response calls, but this product can help investigators get started."The appliance will also arm incident response teams with analysis documentation that can be submitted as part of any legal activity related to a breach or inquiries about the resulting investigation process itself, he said.The executive maintains that the set of data aggregation, analytics, and reporting tools represents a new breed of electronic forensics automation software. Rather than competing with existing discovery applications, Hansen said that MIR was built to integrate with and aggregate from those systems with which the product may be linked via its open API, Hansen said.The individual software modules residing on the Intel-based appliance, which runs on Linux, consist of an endpoint forensic agent, a controller that handles data aggregation and analysis duties, and its console, which offers a Web-based interface that can be accessed remotely over the Web.For now, MIR will only provide analysis of Windows-based systems, but Mandiant said it is already looking to build versions of the appliance that can be dropped into different environments.At $86,500, not including additional support and services costs, the MIR appliance is clearly aimed at large customers, but Hansen said that Mandiant is considering development of a cheaper, more lightweight device or software package aimed at smaller environments. The company may even create a version of the tools to be delivered via a software-as-a-service model, he said.Some industry watchers said the Mandiant system may even allow customers to stay ahead of potential incidents, shifting elements of the electronic discovery process from a reactive measure to a preventative exercise."Mandiant Intelligent Response can change the negative perception associated with rapid evidence discovery by providing a unique collaborative environment that enables remote identification, collection, analysis, and reporting of electronic evidence," said Charles Kolodgy, analyst at IDC. "By fostering precision collection, organizations can avoid gathering incorrect or incomplete data and wasting critical moments when responding to time-sensitive matters."
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A local firm&#39;s technology is behind a new Internet-based early-warning system that could help detect health threats to the global population.
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The IBM project at EPA, being performed jointly with prime contractor Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), includes the Grid Toolbox, a collection of open standards-based Grid software from IBM, Red Hat Linux Enterprise 2.1 and Avaki Enterprise
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US IT giant IBM and a number of research organisations have launched the World Community Grid, a global humanitarian effort that applies the unused computing power of individual and business computers to help address the world&#39;s most difficult health and
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(InfoWorld) - IBM has chosen Sao Paulo as the sixth global location for its specialized software and services laboratories known as "Hipods" or high-performance on-demand solutions facilities, which focus on resolving large-scale computing issues for IBM customers, including eBayÂ and Google. IBM opened the multimillion dollar Brazilian lab Tuesday. The lab will be linked to five existing Hipods worldwide -- IBM's central Hipod facility in its Santa Teresa lab in San Jose, California, and Hipod satellite operations in Beijing; Bangalore, India; Yamato, Japan; and Hursley, U.K. Although IBM won't put a precise financial figure on its Hipod investments, the company did give some sense of the labs' combined computing power. Together, the six Hipods contain more than 1,000 servers, draw on over 20TB of data and employ more than 200 staff, according to Kristof Kloeckner, vice president of strategy and technology for IBM's software group. Researchers in the six Hipods can collaborate virtually with each other using grid computing to quickly form project teams and assign server, software and storage resources for a particular project. They can use their pooled resources to simulate customers' IT environments or a particular computing issue a large user is trying to resolve. When IBM set up its first Hipod four to five years ago, it was to create a team to build knowledge around how best to configure and build high-volume Web sites like online auction site eBay, Kloeckner said. EBay has been a major customer for IBM first in the U.S. and more recently in China, turning to the Hipods for advice on how to scale up its worldwide operations to serve 200 million users. Over time, the Hipods teams have widened their focus to other areas including process automation, virtualization and approaches to SOA (service-oriented architecture). For instance, the labs researchers have come up with a Web-based service to determine how SOA-based workloads perform when used by businesses such as those in banking, travel and insurance. In India, the Bangalore Hipod researchers built a service delivery platform for local mobile phone operator Bharti Airtel to help the rapidly growing carrier handle the addition of 1 million new customers per month, Kloeckner said. Other IBM customers that have also worked with Hipods include Ford Motor, Gap, the New York Stock Exchange, Visa International Service Association, and Whirlpool. Brazil was "the obvious choice" for a Latin American Hipod given the country's size, Kloeckner said, and also continues the vendor's investment in Brazil. IBM has identified five emerging markets it dubs the BRICK countries -- Brazil,Â Russia, India, China and South Korea -- as specific nations where it's keen to invest multimillions of dollars to attract more local customers and partners. Last year, IBM moved its Latin American headquarters from Miami to Sao Paulo. Kloeckner pointed out that IBM'sÂ planned $740 million acquisitionÂ of industrial asset management software vendor MRO SoftwareÂ announced last month will net the company an additional 40- to 50-person team in Brazil. As to where IBM might plan to put a seventh Hipod, the "next logical move" would be Central Europe, Kloeckner said. Although no decisions have been made yet, the vendor may look to establish a Hipod in either Poland or Russia in the coming years, he added.
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International Business Machines Corp. said on Friday it is releasing software that can predict the spread of infectious diseases among countries.
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TechWeb - IBM unveils its solution for company's looking for technology to deal with the &quot;data tsunami&quot; from sensors and radio frequency identification tags.
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High confidence in computer models of the storms enables more effective evacuation planning.