Read Like an Analyst: Cybersecurity, Enterprise IT, and One Hit Wonders

The Read Like an Analyst series gives you a peek into the industry moves and countermoves that generated the most conversation around the company’s Keurig these past few weeks.

Enterprise IT

Storage is in hot demand and shadow IT is still causing major headaches.

• The enterprise storage industry could be nearing a “tipping point” with unprecedented demand. This article offers trends and predictions for how the storage sector will cope.
• Time to freak out, shadow IT is more common than you think, says Information Week and CIO.

Cybersecurity

Car hacking by text and hacking from the sky are just a few reasons Cybersecurity is on the mind of everyone in tech.  Here are some of the stories we found most interesting over the last few weeks.

•  Phasing out bring-your-own-device work policies, progress in anomaly-based malware protection research and vendors rethinking how to bundle and license their security packages are among the 2015 cybersecurity trends predicted in this CSO Online piece.
• Tripwire and ESG have handy recaps of cyber security presentations from the 18^th annual Black Hat Conference held in Las Vegas Aug. 1-6.
• Researchers from UC-San Diego were able to turn on the wipers and apply the brakes of a Corvette via text. You can watch the short video here.
• A drone that can hack from the sky was revealed at DEFCON. “Set up as a security testing tool, with some reconfiguring it could go from a testing device to an actual weapon,” reports Popular Science.
• The NSA is giving the University of Alabama in Huntsville nearly $300,000 in grant funds to support building cybersecurity (or backdoors, depending on how you look at it) into the Internet of Things.
• “Any organization listed on the ASX that does not have an executive with a clear mandate to understand the organization’s technical risks, and facilitate the decision-making on how to address these, is failing its obligations to run in the best interests of shareholders,” James Turner charges in his op-ed for the Australian Financial Review, “Ignorance on cyber security no longer an option for boards.” 

Mobile

Mobile devices may be transforming the industry landscape, but the PC isn’t quite dead yet.

• Smartphones are taking over the world. Check out this presentation on why “Mobile: It Changes Everything.”
• PC’s may be in decline, but they’re far from dead.
• This blistering Ars Technica editorial “Waiting for Android’s inevitable security Armageddon” charges that “the Android ecosystem can’t deal with security, and it won’t change until it’s too late.”
• With a security flaw affecting 55 percent of android handsets, malicious apps can gain superpowers to spy on the device’s owner.

One-Hit Wonders

Sometimes we come across a single piece that we think you shouldn’t miss.  Here are some one-hit wonders from the past two weeks.

• What do you think is the top programming language of 2015? Find out how your guess ranks here.
•  If you didn’t make it to OSCON 2015, you can check out some video highlights here.
• An exploration of Marc Andreessen’s statement that “Software is eating the world” is the theme for this “Breaking Smart” collection of essays.”
• This article offers “An explainer on containers” and a look at how they will be used at federal agencies.
• When it comes to public cloud management, most large and mid-size U.S. companies want to outsource.
• Having trouble wrapping your head around what exactly machine learning is? This brief visual introduction can clear it up for you.
• This article explains why and how, “Google’s datacenter network is the magic behind what makes much of Google really work.”
•  There is at least one Google, sorry, Alphabet, product for each letter of the alphabet. From A-Z, here they are.