IT News: EdTech, DR, Networks, HR, Compliance, CRM, Risk, HPC (Sept. 27th, 2021)
Posted in Volume 282, Issue 4 - Sept 20th, 2021 — Sept 26th, 2021
Selections from the weekly newsletter, “IT News and Events.”
EdTech
Fixing The Back-To-School Slow-Network Blues
Try these four tips to improve bandwidth weighed down by additional devices in the classroom.
If your network seems to be underperforming now that everyone is back in the classroom, you might have a bandwidth problem - too many devices contending for too little network capacity. When troubleshooting a slow network, you need to look for a chokepoint. Here are some good places to start... [EdTech, September 21st, 2021]
13 DC EdTech Companies Shaping The Future Of Learning
Edtech is having a banner year in the DMV, but it's built on years of startup growth. We've rounded up the key players you need to know.
"The year of 2021 has been kind to many technology categories in the DMV, but one that's been in the headlines almost more than any other is the city's booming edtech industry.
With raises, acquisitions and product launches, education technology has had practically unparalleled growth as schools continue with virtual learning techniques, and seek new ways of bringing tech into the IRL classroom. At the same time, institutions are seeking new models to run front offices, and make education more accessible..." [Technical.ly, September 20th, 2021]
Here's How This Edtech Has Opened Up A World Of Possibilities
One industry that has benefitted maximum from COVID-19 is edtech. The newly launched edtech startups as well as the existing ones both have shown promising growth.
"Some edtech startups are busily expanding their course offerings and video uploads to acquire more customers. At the same time, edtech Teachmint is helping teachers by providing technology solutions for online classes.
Bengaluru-based Teachmint, which began its life after the global pandemic broke last year, enables hundreds of thousands of teachers in the world's second-largest Internet market to run classes online and serve their students.
Let's have a look at Teachmint's short but promising journey..." [Entrepreneur, September 22nd, 2021]
5 EdTech Research Trends & Needs For The Future
Equitable edtech, individualized learning, and innovation will be among the focuses of a new collaborative at the University of California, Irvine formed to research technology's potential in childhood learning.
"The Jacobs Foundation recently awarded a five-year, nearly $11 million grant to the University of California, Irvine to create a collaborative network of educators and researchers to help design digital technologies for children.
The Connecting the EdTech Research EcoSystem (CERES) brings together experts in computer science, psychology, neuroscience, and education, to better utilize education technology's potential..." [TechLearning, September 21st, 2021]
IT Industry Urged To Make Educational Technology Available For All
Kathy Gibson is at Huawei Connect - The IT industry needs to take responsibility for making affordable educational technology for marginalised communities around the world
This is the word from Stefania Giannini, assistant director-general for education at UNESCO, who points out that the Covid-19 pandemic has had a massive impact on education outcomes around the world.
This has been most pronounced in emerging markets, with major setbacks in education, growth and development.
'This makes digital inclusion more than ever a societal imperative,' she says, adding that technology and connectivity has to be made available to every learner if the world is to fully recover and get back to normal. [IT-Online, September 23rd, 2021]
In A Remote Learning Landscape, Tech Adoption Has Never Been More Critical
For early adopters of edtech, the silver lining of the Covid-19 cloud is the way it has rocketed education into a new technical dimension.
"Even the most technology-resistant educators have been forced to come to grips with the tools of remote teaching. But most are singing the praises of the plethora of apps now available in the education space.
It does seem like a blessing in disguise at face value, but IT departments the world over will tell you that a precocious, unplanned 'big bang' implementation can have disastrous consequences. Educators may well be adopting technology - but is it the right technology, and will their enthusiasm last?..." [The Tech Edvocate, September 20th, 2021]
DR
The Evolution Of DraaS
The shift of daily production workloads from on-premises to cloud has also impacted approaches to protection of business assets and operation
"When it comes to protecting critical information and achieving the ability to recover following a disruptive event such as a natural disaster, power outage, technical failure, or cyber incident, the methods and innovations of recovery have evolved to meet the demands of modern business and customers. One of these more recent evolutions in the umbrella of business continuity is Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)..." [HelpNet Security, September 24th, 2021]
Google Cloud Disaster Recovery Using Actifio, VMware Engine And Zerto
Review basic concepts involved in doing DR in cloud, and example use case of fictionalized customer, Acme Corporation
"Some of the most desirable applications to move into the cloud are ones that run on proprietary platforms such as VMware, Inc., connected to enterprise storage arrays.
But because those applications are often mission-critical, they can also be the most challenging-especially if they have demanding disaster recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs), and are configured using an isolated, 'bubble' network..." [StorageNewsletter, September 21st, 2021]
Networks
A Slow Burn: Smartnic Sales To Grow To Over $1.5 Billion In 2026
The SmartNIC revolution is going to be a slow-burn one, with Gartner predicting there will only be $1.6 billion of sales in 2026, up from $50 million in 2020.
"Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers passed on a Gartner report summary to subscribers, saying: 'Gartner forecasts that shipments of SmartNICs (also known as DPUs and IPUs) will grow 18x from 2021 to 2025 as data centres move from top of rack (TOR) switches to SmartNIC leaf switches.'
A SmartNIC (Network Interface Card) or DPU (Data Processing Unit) has processing power and software to look after network, storage and security functions currently managed by the NIC host server or dedicated devices..." [Blocks & Files, September 20th, 2021]
10 Threat Trends In DNS Security
Cisco Security examines Cisco Umbrella data for trends in malicious DNS activity during 2020.
Cisco Security analyzed activity from Cisco Umbrella, its cloud-native security service, to dissect trends in DNS traffic in 2020. Cisco Security looked at how frequently organizations saw traffic going to sites involved in different types of malicious DNS activity. [Dark Reading, September 21st, 2021]
HR
How To Cultivate IT Talent Remotely
Identifying and growing IT talent in remote and hybrid workplaces is a big change for IT leaders, who must rely more on metrics, emotional intelligence, and new remote skills to elevate the best from their teams
"The pandemic proved that working remote works. People were productive - often more productive than they were in the office - and want to keep doing it. But if you were the kind of manager who led by owning a room and promoted people because you could see they were charismatic, dedicated, or natural leaders - qualities you watched them use - you might be feeling lost right now when it comes to knowing whom on your team you should tag for promotion..." [CIO, September 22nd, 2021]
Compliance
10 Data Compliance Best Practices To Establish Today
Poor data security compliance policies can make it easier for ransomware attackers to succeed in their efforts to lock up your data
"As Sophos recently reported, some attackers are shifting to extortion-style attacks. Instead of simply encrypting files, they threaten to publish data unless a ransom is paid, thereby putting the victimized organization in a position where it will get slammed with regulatory fines-not to mention damage to its brand.
For this and many other reasons, compliance and information security are closely intertwined, placing even more importance on data privacy compliance as a core pillar of every security strategy..." [Business 2 Community, September 21st, 2021]
CRM
7 Ways A CRM Can Help Reduce Costs For Your Business
Are you still printing documents and piling them up in a file folder, or sending an email with the attached copy of what's been written on paper?
"Why not move to a CRM software? Using a CRM can help move into a digital workstyle! A recent study shows that 58% of offices across Europe store some kind of record-keeping material on-site rather than using a digital system; 2% have no structured way whatsoever to store customer communications.
Why not move to a CRM software? Using a CRM can help move into a digital workstyle! A recent study shows that 58% of offices across Europe store some kind of record-keeping material on-site rather than using a digital system; 2% have no structured way whatsoever to store customer communications..." [Business 2 Community, September 23rd, 2021]
Risk
5 Tips For Achieving Better Cybersecurity Risk Management
Casey Ellis, founder, CTO and chairman of Bugcrowd, discusses a roadmap for lowering risk from cyberattacks most effectively.
"When thinking about cybersecurity risk management, think about the last time you were comparing health-insurance policies. Each policy offers a means to protect yourself and your family from financial losses (e.g. from hospital coverage), and many policies include things that are designed to reduce the likelihood of those losses occurring in the first place (e.g fitness benefits, preventative healthcare, etc.)..." [threatpost, September 23rd, 2021]
HPC
A Status Check On Global Exascale Ambitions
As we head toward the annual Supercomputing Conference season we wanted to take a moment for a level-set on exascale.
"There has been much talk about reaching this pinnacle over the last several years and while plenty of centers say they have reached exascale, that is only for single-precision peak theoretical performance. Entire countries have made the exascale claim as well, noting that their combined compute power is exascale. Neither of these count, at least by the standard definition. A true exascale system is measured in peak double-precision floating point and is a single, networked system..." [The Next Platform, September 23rd, 2021]